Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies Enters Nobel Peace Prize Winner Debate
Nobel Peace Prize notfatjustbigboned.com
Patrick Center October 9, 2009 | WGVU
“I’ll be frank nothing good can come of this,” said Gleaves Whitney, director of Grand Valley State University’s Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies.
His concern is that naming President Obama Peace Prize winner presents a problem for a world leader who is facing some difficult decisions.
“He will have a lot of psychological pressure on him to cooperate. All the things that he’s been talking about if you look at the nuclear disarmament, trying to work through the U.N., reaching out to the Islamic world, all doing things that require international cooperation. But the problem with cooperation is that you’re dependent on the other side to cooperate with you. So this sets up President Obama to be embarrassed a number of times if the other side doesn’t come to the sand box and play. People could hold back collaboration to embarrass the White House. They could exact a very high price for negotiating to a solution with Obama. It really could hurt our foreign policy if he feels psychological pressure to live up to what this Nobel Prize means.”
Obama admits he may not have done enough to deserve the award, graciously acknowledging he’s “both surprised and deeply humbled.” And Whitney would have to agree with the Commander in Chief.
“If you look at the people who have won the award in the past it’s for exceptional achievement. If you look at a Mikhail Gorbachev or if you look at Jimmy Carter for the Camp David Accords back in the ‘70’s, these are people who actually did things that were significant in the struggle for peace. And President Obama I think is rightly embarrassed because it’s not his fault that they chose him at this point of course, but it’s a little bit embarrassing because he doesn’t have the record. And it’s, as he put it in his statement, he’s now expected to join the ranks of these very eminent people before him. Presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson who got the prize in their second term and here he was nominated within 10 days of taking office. So it’s a little bit odd.”
Whitney believes this was a political maneuver by the Nobel Committee as an attempt to steer U.S. policy while also taking a jab at the Bush administration.
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