Like most people my first reaction to Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize was "What?!?!?"
But I got on the internet and looked up some info and history on the prize, and I can see where they were going with it. The public perception is that the prize is given for past accomplishment, but historically that hasn't always been the case. It has been given to some people prospectively, and/or to have a desired effect, and pretty clearly that's what's happening here.
For example: In 1998, Hume and Trimble got it for their Northern Ireland peace talks even though the Good Friday Agreement did not come into force until December 1999, and which took almost another decade to fulfill. And Arafat and Rabin got it in 1994, just for agreeing to meet with each other, even though their efforts were eventually for naught. The best analogue to the Obama award was that of Leon Bourgeois in 1920. A former French Prime Minister, he was the first President of the Council of the League of Nations, elected in 1919, and with no significant accomplishments by the time of his award. But expectations were high for the League at the time, hence the prospective prize.
The concept of a prospective prize is as much illustrated by the people who received the award as it is by people whose accomplishments in the cause of peace are unquestionable, yet never received it. Gandhi, for example, was nominated four times and never won it. In fact, he was nominated in 1948, two weeks before he was murdered, and that year the committee gave no award saying there was "no living person" who deserved it.
Let's remember who's on the Nobel committee. It's all Norwegians, Swedes and Danes, so the award is given based on a European perspective, and a highly pacifist one at that. If they are considering an American for the award, it's given based on how the Europeans, or this particular lot of Europeans, view us. From their view, after the last eight years, Obama really does represent a sea change in attitude and tone, and one that matches not only the committee's mission but a European worldview.
Two of my co-workers went to Germany recently. One just got back last week, and the other went two years ago, and they both said that Germans really like America and Americans, but they both remarked that it is beyond our imagining just how much they really hated the America that Bush projected. Years later, they still haven't forgiven or forgotten Rumsfeld's remark that, after 50 years as our ally, and the front-line bulwark against the Soviets, they got dismissed as "Old Europe" because they had neither the desire nor public support to go fight in Iraq -- a position that proved right in the end.
You can disagree with the idea of a prospective peace prize -- and I don't endorse it wholeheartedly either -- but at the end of the day, it's the committee's prize to give to whomever they choose. They've got their reasons, and from their point of view, it's a rational choice, even if it doesn't seem so from our point of view. Consider, too: who else would they have given it to? The last year hasn't been a particularly good one for the cause of peace and diplomacy.
I think they have given Obama the award because they have heard his aspirations to advance the cause of diplomacy, and want to send a pretty clear message that says, "Nice speeches; now go make it happen." I don't doubt he has the character to be motivated by that; time will tell whether he has what it takes to put it into action.
And as to what the righties might say, well, I have a hard time seeing a downside to receiving the freakin' Nobel Peace Prize. Anyone that wants to ridicule it puts themselves in the same category as the black kids who pick on the one who does his homework for "acting white." And what are the odds that a Limbaugh or a Beck might actually "go there" over this? Even money, I'd bet. That kind of talk clearly tells more about the speaker than the subject.
Let's face it, the GOP gets their drawers in a bunch over the Nobel Peace Prize because it doesn’t have many past winners. Kissinger got it in 1973, jointly with Le Duc Tho, but then I think you have to go all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt in 1906 to find a Republican American laureate. And frankly, TR with his trust-busting and environmentalism would only find a home in the Democratic Party if he were alive today. I'm pretty sure he'd take a "big stick" to the noggin of anyone who advanced "Drill, baby, drill" as a party plank. Democrats, on the other hand can point to Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter (awarded after he’d served) and former Vice President Al Gore (also awarded for work after he served).
UPDATED: I corrected a mistaken reference to FDR winning a Nobel Peace Prize. He did not.