Obama's Nobel Prize

Obviously, this was the item of the day and we'll probably still be talking about it a week from now. It's going to spawn a debate about Obama's international stance versus Bush's, and its going to get partisan and very, very ugly. The Democrats have already said something insane in response to a cookie-cutter Republican statement, so before it gets any worse (hard to imagine already), just a couple of quick thoughts.

Obama's international stance, diplomacy-wise, is obviously very different from Bush's, and its easy to take the Nobel award as a European referendum on Bush's way of doing things. It's interesting to note here that its unlikely that just any Democrat taking office would have gotten the award. Hillary Clinton has, as Secretary of State and even in her campaign, been more hawkish than Obama and to an extent, more of a unilateralist. Certainly McCain was as well. So Obama's foreign tone is different in important ways from what is normal, even among Democrats.

That said, the Nobel committee made no pretense of saying that Obama had received the award because of concrete things that he managed to do - things that the American Left is angry at him for not doing when he said he would. His tone hasn't gotten Europe significantly more on board with Iraq or Afghanistan, nor has he gotten the US out of either. Then there's Guantanamo, and the rest of the SNL skit.

There's some speculation as to whether his reception of the Nobel will - or is supposed to - influence his decision on Afghanistan. I think there's some slight risk, but the more important factor in that decision is Obama's information bias; on issues that he is less knowledgeable about, he hasn't done much because he favors more information all the time, even when the information he has is sufficient but not perfect. He used to be a law professor, its fair to say he's got a case of this. It's going to be all about content, no matter what decision he makes.

The Nobel is a very public award, and the committee knows it. To a very significant extent, this is directed at the American Public more than it is directed at anyone else. Its a chance for Europe to basically say "more like this" to the American public, with decent odds of being heard very clearly. I don't think there's much question as to why.