Here's the One Big Thing he did: he changed the tone.

He scaled down the rhetoric. He dialed back the race to the anhiliation of everyone. He softened the atmosphere of us-and-them and to-hell-with-everyone. He restored validity to the idea of negotiating your way through conflicts. He paused to let other people talk. He threw some cold water on the open endorsement of torture. He stopped calling our enemies and allies stupid childish names and cheap insults. He returned to the notion of the judicious use of force. He used the word "humility" without spitting. He eased the practice of unilateralism as a default mode. He took the boiling pot of the midle east off the bonfire and put it instead back on a hot plate, at least rhetorically. He did not leer at Muslims with an openly evangelical and crusading Christianity. He did not glare at other nations who dared to articulate and pursue their own self interests. He did not berate anyone who fell out of lock step agreement with him as enemies of liberty and lovers of terrorism. He presided over several simultaneous national and global crisies without resorting to an insistence that the crisises gave him license to do whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted whenever he wanted. He did not issue a proclamation of security that claimed the prerogative to preemptively make war wherever and whenever he pleased for whatever reason he secretly claimed. He steered the ship of state away from its Thelma and Louise acceleration towards a precipice of violence and militarism.

In short, rhetorically, he is the anti-Bush. And for that, the world cheered, and the vector of our momentum eased back, if only slightly, away from the direction of endless war.

Now then, this may all be just words. And while this concept may come as a shock to people who have become entangled in the anti-meaning nihilism of Fox News and Rush O'Reilly -- when you are the President of the United States, words matter.

What he also gave notice was that this American POTUS understands one simple truth:

We are not omnipotent simply because we have the most weapons. There are limits to our power and all the bombs in the world cannot solve our problems.

He is rational, reasoned, articulate, understanding, respectful, intelligent and most importantly, he is the President of the United States.

It drives connies nuts to be reminded by the world that they really cannot stand neo-con or conservative ideologies. But we all know better. Good post.

except the subject line.

Sure words matter. They can have tangible consequences. Certainly a good place to start.

But achievements matter more. A lot of people talked about peace in Ireland, but Bill Clinton can reasonably claim to have helped bring it about.

What surprises me (well not all that much) is the lack of embarrassment from Obama's most ardent supporters. It isn't that Obama didn't deserve to be nominated within two weeks of becoming president, or to win within 10 months of becoming president. It's that no president could ever deserve such.

The Nobel committee has done the near-impossible. They've devalued the Nobel Peace Prize from a level that was already almost comically low. There are a host of world figures who can equally claim the "not-Bush" mantle. Some of them have actually done things, and have been doing those things for a good bit longer than 10 months (or 10 days).

Another indicator was a recent Reuter's poll which showed the United States moving from 7th to 1st as the most admired nation. Indeed, words matter -- not only here but abroad.

He dialed back the race to the anhiliation of everyone.

And put the focus on the anhilation of Americans only. Yeah, he's a real fucking hero.

Jack

in physics. Having zero accomplishments in the field, but being willing to say the words 'String Theory' are obviously accomplishments enough.

I can't wait to see how the Obama worshiping press spins the awarding of this Crackerjack Box prize. Oh look, you are breathing! Here's your prize . . . now go forth and actually accomplish something to have earned it.

nice metaphor.

Yes he does deserve it. The Nobel Peace Prize is the highest valued booby prize on the planet. Here's a list of previous booby prize winners:

Al Gore: For his (still waiting for it) hockey stick assessment of Earf temperatures and prescient klaxon warning that Manhattan would be under 20 ft of water by now (oh, if only we had listened!).

Muhamed El Baradei: For his perpetual futzing around with dictators seeking nukes.

Jimmy Carter: For race baiting, his on going attempts to undermine the free world, and generally not knowing when to shut up.

Yasser Arafat: For providing an evil against which the forces of good must fight.

Mikhail Gorbachev: For providing an evil against which the forces of good must fight.

My nomination for next year. . .

Mahmud Ahmadinnerjacket: For re-establishing legitimacy to the method of choosing Nobel Peace Prize laureates.

Yes. Obama is certainly in good company.

in his immediate future. Gotta capitalize on that political capital while it is still capitalizable.

Dat boy cain't be worryin' hisself about no Afghanistan now, fuck dem boys out dere in da trenches, he gotta be gettin' aroun' asseptin' his ree-ward.

Jack

straightforwardly stating that the Peace Prize is (and always has been for as long as I've paid any attention) "aspirational" (as somebody [MA?] nicely put it downpage there somewhere).

That is, its primary intent is not to honor the fulfilled accomplishment/achievement of peace somewhere after the fact, but to nudge the world in the direction of peace through honoring active, in-progress efforts and/or changes in policy aimed at that goal; e.g., in Obama's case, a corrective re-positioning of the ship of state's tiller, even if that supertanker is so far still showing only early and faint signs of an actual change in course towards the goal the Committee seeks to promote. (As Sarvis put it so well, by these criteria "Obama deserves it".

This practice and criterion (and hence awarding of the Prize) is obviously utterly political, about which the Committee is utterly transparent.

It also obviously carries the risk that the initiative doesn't pan out, opening the Committee and Prize to ridicule (Kissinger?). To their credit, they don't seem to much care about that.

So the howls echoing now are as silly as they are predictable with every awarding of the Peace Prize, and roughly equivalent to criticizing water for being wet. If you don't like the wetness of water, that's fine, but it's silly to criticize the water for being what it is or behaving the way its nature compels it to behave.

Next year. . .

The Nobel Prize in Economics goes to. . .Angel of Dearth!

For his "Buy Low, Sell High" Theory of Economics.

(This year's award for Physics goes to the guys who invented the CCD. . .back in 1969! You mean we had to go that far back?)

Yours is a good plan, but I think mine is better. My economic plan is this: Don't spend more money than you got.

Jack

http://www.drudgereport.com/

For their bold stance against propriety, basic common sense and the opinion of practically everyone the world, we now have an official list of BOTF clowns:

• Sarvis, obviously
• Art and Soul
• Artemisia
• Dallas NE
• Liberick
• Tartuffle
• Wooley

Keep twisting yourselves into knows, guys. It's good to see.

bullshit.

Find me a winner on the linked list with a shorter resume than Obama. Plenty of stinkers, and lots of politics, sure. But most of the past winners could at least point to a record of accomplishment beyond good speeches, good intentions, and "I'm not the devil".