Fleishman Hillard: The Political View

And this year’s winner of the C. Montgomery Burns Award for outstanding achievement in the field of POTENTIAL is, President Barack Obama.”

Dohhh! (All the video’s of this classic Simpsons moment from YouTube have been ‘deleted’)

Don’t get me wrong. I love Barack Obama as much as the next Canadian (unless that ‘next’ Canadians is Ron Guirguis, who seems to love him freakishly much). But I think it was premature and fundamentally wrong to award this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama.

I think he could (eventually) earn one. He has the right stuff (as far as I can guess). But right now, he hasn’t actually done anything, he’s made no real progress anywhere, he’s built no consensus in the United States, and if anything he has done less than expected to pull the United States out of its foreign wars.

This award was the equivalent of giving someone a prize for “being a good guy”. I think they may even have given it to him just for NOT being George Bush.

But in their haste to put the President on the Nobel Podium, I think they missed the point of the Nobel Peace Prize, it’s not ONLY about good intentions.. although that’s part of it… it’s also about spending your own personal political and power capital to make something happen.

Apart from that one conference with Muslims he held in Egypt, President Obama has not spent any of his political capital on peace yet, because he’s devoted it all to health care reform.

There are a lot of brave people in this world who have put their money (Bill Gates), their influence (Mikhail Gorbachev) and their lives (anyone associated with CARE, World Vision or a host of other aid organizations) on the line to create REAL peace opportunities. Giving Obama a Peace Prize for talking but not yet doing, cheapens the award and slaps them all.

Sadly, this seems to be increasingly common for the Peace Prize. Al Gore, another good guy, got one for making, what, a movie? He overshadowed his co-winners fromt the International Panel on Climate Change who actually had REAL accomplishments on climate change.

Typical. In 2005 they gave it to the International Atomic Energy Agency for really good intentions and no real accomplishments on controlling Nuclear technology.

In 2001, they gave it to, wait for it… THE UNITED NATIONS… I have no idea what they’ve contributed to Peace recently.

I guess in a world, where Jim Flaherty gets named the BEST Finance Minister in the WORLD for, I don’t know, this makes sense in some bizarre way.

No two ways about it… it sucks.