Obama's Nobel Is the 'Not George W. Bush' Award

The Nobel Peace Prize President Obama won today is nothing more or less than the “fourth Nobel Prize for Not Being George W. Bush,” writes Michael Grunwald. The other beneficiaries of the NPNBGWB were Jimmy Carter in 2002, for criticizing the Iraq war buildup; Mohamed ElBaradei of the IAEA in 2005, for refusing to kowtow on WMDs; and Al Gore in 2007, as a contrast to Bush's climate-change denials.

"This ill-concealed crusade is clearly damaging the prestige of the Nobel," writes Grunwald in Time. "The winners are supposed to be honored for their achievements, not for symbolizing the committee's grudges. And it probably won't do Obama any favors; he wants to be a leader, not a symbol, and honoring him for his rhetoric about a new American approach to diplomacy only reinforces the meme of his critics that he's merely a man of rhetoric." (More Mohamed ElBaradei stories.)