The Liberty Papers

From the LA Times:

President Obama, who has pledged to place diplomacy ahead of confrontation and reached out to a skeptical world with offers of mutual understanding, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today for what the committee called “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Obama is only the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Prize for Peace — President Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906, President Woodrow Wilson in 1919.

Obama was nominated for the prize after just weeks in office, with the award today after less than nine months into the president’s term a sign that the Nobel committee is recognizing aspirations for peace over achievements.

Yes, you heard that right. His nomination occurred just 11 days after his inauguration (the deadline for submissions was Feb 1). It shows that, like much of Obama’s career, he’s being judged by his campaign rhetoric rather than what he’s actually doing. Things like:

• Delay on closing Guantanamo
• Continuation of Bush terrorist detention policies
• Failure to rein in medical marijuana raids as promised
• Withdrawal from Iraq no faster than the plan Bush already had in place
• Extension of wiretapping and other aspects of the PATRIOT ACT
• Complete and utter silence on DADT
• Accomplished so little of his agenda that SNL spoofed him as doing nothing.

I can only suppose this is the logical end of the American celebrity-worship culture. Obama gets a Nobel Peace Prize for who he is, not what he’s done.