The Obama one was pretty much for not being George W Bush (or, more to the point, not being controlled by Dick Cheney et al; Bush himself wasn't the _real_ problem there). They'd probably have given it to McCain if he'd won, too. People were _really_ worried about Bush and pals; by the end Cheney was pushing Bush to _start a war with Iran_.

Obama got it because he was black, not for not being Bush.

Maybe they didn’t want to make the same mistake:

Nobel secretary regrets Obama peace prize

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34277960

When you fuck up world peace so badly your successor gets the prize for doing nothing...

Not even "for doing nothing", more like "before doing anything". He wasn't even 10 months into his presidency.

If there's one job in the world where I'd wait until someone's well out of office before judging their impact on peace, it's the US presidency.

I'm in a circle of people who lean pretty damn far left and even at the time, the only reactions I heard were "huh, what?"

> If there's one job in the world where I'd wait until someone's well out of office before judging their impact on peace, it's the US presidency.

Sure, but if you want your prize to have an impact, you sometimes have to hand it out to hopefuls?

That’s not how it works. The prizes are not motivational but for achievement . Otherwise we should give the physics prize to some school kid in the hope of them discovering quantum gravity

Maybe. But then why restrict it to only living people?

I dunno. Do you? Does the Nobel prize have a history of shaping the future? Did winning the Nobel prize make Obama a different president? Was it supposed to?

To me, it seemed oddly aspirational, but maybe that's more often the case with the peace prize, too.

Also worth noting that the language in the press release [1] and facts page [2] makes it all sound like it was for things already achieved (although maybe that's at odds with "Inspires Hope for a Better Future"), and I'm skeptical of looking at year 1 achievements the job with arguably the most destructive power in the world.

It's not a hill I'd fight, let alone die, on, though. :)

1- https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2009/press-release/ 2- https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2009/obama/facts/

If you wanted to avoid "misnominations", you'd be forced to wait until the career of the nominee is over (meaning in many cases: award it posthumously).

But the Nobel price explicitly tries to avoid that; hindsight is always gonna be better.

Yeah. I'm just okay special casing "against" heads of state.

Even Obama said basically those words when he got a call from his staff at 6AM announcing that he had won, and he said in the press conference that he didn't feel he deserved it (I looked this up in his 2020 book Promised Land).

Meanwhile for Trump... I'm pretty certain he wants it because a clever, charismatic, eloquent and beloved Black man got it...

Obama was not doing nothing, he actively killed people by drones more than anyone before him. Nobel endorsed killer.

Even more than FDR!?!

Kissinger's decision is debatable but legit. That time it was not only about him. It was just pathetic from him to took it when his co-winner declined.

Price for Obama was probably miss-step but at least he was not desperately begging for it like Trump does.