Yoni Brenner comments in the Times about the silliness of the award.
It seems to me that the politics would argue for Obama turning the award down. Let him say "I very much appreciate that you appreciate what I am trying to do, but I haven't done it yet and there are many deserving alternatives. Why don't we circle back in three years and see how I am doing?" Even his political opponents would have to credit him. By accepting the award he strengthens the narrative that sees him as seeing himself as the Obamessiah.
More distasteful than what Obama has not done and the deserving candidates passed over is Obama's track record. James Woolsey, CIA director under President Clinton, writes in the Journal, of the ugly premise underlying Obama's central Israel initiative: the ban on expanding kitchens in Gush Etsyon. Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton, recently observed in the Journal Obama's apparent intent to not "recognize free and fair elections in Honduras... at the same time it is about to recognize the president of Afghanistan, who was elected in what is now seen as a fraudulent electoral process." Add to that calibrated response to the violence in iran and his rebuff of the Dalai Lama and it seems that we have a president quite willing to trade freedom for stability.
The President, and his policy makers, argue that they are just being realistic; that their policies offer better outcomes. Which may prove out. But it does accentuate the perversity of extending this award to a man doggedly justifying means with ends, before the results are in.
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