Concrete Question

by Concrete Academic

Prescience or politics? Liability or leverage? Take our poll and pontificate poetically in the comments.

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5 Responses to “Concrete Question”
  1. Vlad 16 October 2009 at 2:17 pm #

    He's so charismatic, he should have gotten the chemistry prize, too. Right now, expectations are still too low.

  2. MichaelBingham 16 October 2009 at 5:13 pm #

    What I've noticed since he has won it is his supporters completely changing their tune. Whenever those with heavy conservative leanings criticize Barack Obama, Obama supporters almost in unison say that he hasn't had time to do anything. Now that he is a Nobel Prize winner, they are jumping up and down and saying that he most definitely earned it because hehas done so much. Well, which is it? Either he has had time to accomplish or he hasn't. It can't be both ways.

  3. Ezra 16 October 2009 at 7:53 pm #

    I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's well deserved. Looking back on some previous winners like Al Gore, Kim Dae Jung, and the middle east prize of 1994, I don't feel like the peace prize is really supposed to be representative of any real achievement. I mean, I suppose you could make a case for climate change, although it's hardly like Al Gore and the agency could be empirically connected to the growth in awareness and action on climate change. But the other two awards I mentioned both saw their efforts, if you could really say they achieved anything, rolled back to the old status quo.

    So I don't feel like Obama's award is exactly inconsistent with previous award criteria. If so then the award lost it's real meaning a long time ago. If Yasser Arafat is worthy then I don't see what basis excludes Obama and not him.

  4. VladTodor 16 October 2009 at 8:15 pm #

    Oh sure, leave it to Ezra to be thoughtful about it rather than jaded and cynical.

    • Ezra 16 October 2009 at 11:02 pm #

      lol. Obama is a politician. I'm jaded enough about him just off of that principle. But he has spent some political capital on risky foreign policy overtures, particularly towards Muslim interests, where he didn't have to. I'm prepared to offer a measure of praise towards that.