I am not an Obama fan (at all) but I can follow their logic. He does hold promise in the specific area of promoting peace. However, I certainly don't think he did the most in this area over the last year.

That's one reason why I think the Nobel prize is a perversion. The set of eligible people is not one or two people. There are a lot of people who do great things and in the end, the selection is fairly arbitrary. Honoring someone for doing someone honorable is good; Conferring enormous authority to one person by granting them a prize diminishes the authority of other great people.

Take Krugman. He got a Nobel for a very very specific area of economics. He now writes on an area that was not his specific focus nor has he proven himself particularly insightful. However, if he gets in an argument with other respected economists, the general perception is, "who has the Nobel?"

This observation applies to all prizes, and is articulated well from another angle by Feynman (commenting on his own Nobel prize): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f61KMw5zVhg

I think that Obama's prize was because of his work on nuclear weapons

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09...

To be fair, the main reason Obama got the prize was for the dramatic change in diplomatic relations between the US and, well, everyone else. The previous eight years basically consisted of a repeating monologue of "It's our way or the highway", whereas now the US is actually engaging in dialogue.

That said, I completely agree it was premature and that he shouldn't have gotten it before having actually achieved something more than making pretty speeches.

Actually, I'd consider changing world opinion about the future of the US overnight quite an accomplishment all by itself; that is doing something.

But running two wars? While getting a peace prize?

It's truly ironic, but Obama being not-Bush has indeed been good for world peace as a whole. Compare their respective diplomatic approaches to China and Russia.

Was this one of those deals where you negotiate by making them wince first and then coming in with an offer that alone wouldn't have succeeded but now looks peachy (really nice) compared to the wince-inducing proposal.

Give em some time, those wars were already in progress and the US government doesn't turn on a dime.