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by rkomorn 254 days ago
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?"
2 comments
eru 254 days ago
> 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?

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rkomorn 254 days ago
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/

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myrmidon 254 days ago
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.

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rkomorn 254 days ago
Yeah. I'm just okay special casing "against" heads of state.
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vjvjvjvjghv 254 days ago
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
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eru 252 days ago
Maybe. But then why restrict it to only living people?
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netsharc 254 days ago
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...

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