What Will Obama Do With the Nobel Prize?

The news this morning that President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts at international cooperation, especially on minimizing nuclear threats in the world and attacking climate change, comes as a surprise. The questions of 'does he deserve it?' have begun. WaPo is rounding up an array of reactions.

In his own reaction, Obama said he was honored and humbled, but he wasn't sure he deserved it. His spoke of the award as a symbol of a group effort throughout the world to work for peace. As per the usual from Obama, it was a classy handling of a bit of a dicey issue.

I think two things are most important here. One goes to the heart of why he was selected by the committee in Oslo. I think Josh Marshall nails it:

This is an odd award. You'd expect it to come later in Obama's presidency and tied to some particular event or accomplishment. But the unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world, the 'hyper-power' as the French have it, became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it's a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was 'normal history' rather than dark aberration.

Remember that last sentence as we go forward. This, like so many aspects of Obama's initial period as president, is about the damning record of an arrogant Bush administration. This is a sharp rebuke of Bush tactics. That angle will be largely ignored, I predict, especially as we hear the usual Obama detractors decry the selection. John Dickerson at Slate:

The award will feed into the automatic sorting mechanism of politics. Conservatives who scoffed that Obama's Olympic defeat meant a drop in prestige should, by the same logic, herald this as an even greater spike in the same. They won't, because no one gets a prize for consistency.

Other parties that benefit from the prize are the producers at Fox News, who now know what they're going to talk about this weekend. Pundits win because the Nobel committee has validated the idea that speeches and atmospherics are really important. The award also offers the opportunity for all of us elites to do what we do best, which is miss how regular people might react.

But, really, this is definitely one situation where I could care less what the Rush Limbaughs of the Right think (Limbaugh himself believes this is about the world cheering a "neutering" of America). It will be hard for them to gain much traction crying about this.

Here's the second thing the matters: How will this award affect Obama's actions, if at all? In his speech this morning, he acknowledged the wars America is in, and he talked of working to ensure basic rights to all peoples.

We can't allow the differences between peoples to define the way that we see one another. And that's why we must pursue a new beginning among people of different faiths and races and religions, one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.

And we must all do our part to resolve those conflicts that have caused so much pain and hardship over so many years. And that effort must include an unwavering commitment to finally realize that -- the rights of all Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security in nations of their own.

We can't accept a world in which more people are denied opportunity and dignity that all people yearn for: the ability to get an education and make a decent living, the security that you won't have to live in fear of disease or violence without hope for the future.

This comes at a time when pressure for him to raise troop levels in Afghanistan, to ostensibly restart the war, is reaching a fever pitch. And this weekend, the National Equality March will take place in DC. Obama is scheduled to speak to the Human Rights Campaign Dinner on Saturday, where he is expected to address gay rights. (He made some serious promises to the gay community during his campaign, but has yet to step up. It should be a revealing speech ... or not.) So, in highlighting war and respect for all peoples in his remarks this morning, will the Nobel Prize push him to advance gay rights? Will it give him pause in throwing more blood and treasure into the sinkhole that is Afghanistan? Or will he use this as a kind of bully pulpit, especially in Afghanistan?