The Oslo-Copenhagen Contradiction
E.J. Dionne
WashPost
Reading the latest issue of The Economist magazine this weekend, I was struck by a great contradiction in the response to Chicago’s rebuff by the International Olympic Committee after President Obama’s intervention on the one side, and the response to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama on the other.
The Economist went to press before the Nobel announcement, so its article on Obama was rather downbeat. Under the headline “Down in the Valley,” the magazine reported, accurately, that Chicago’s defeat led Obama’s “gleeful critics” to depict the failure “as a symptom of bigger defects, notably Mr. Obama’s overweening self-belief, and the naïve trust they say he invests in unreliable foreigners.” The magazine quoted conservative blogger Erick Erickson from the Red State website: “So much for improving America’s standing in the world, Barry O.”
But, of course, the Nobel committee's decision confirmed the success the president has had in “improving America’s standing in the world.” David Ignatius caught it right, I thought, when he wrote on this blog: “America was too unpopular under Bush. The Nobel committee is expressing a collective sigh of relief that America has rejoined the global consensus. They’re right. It’s a good thing. It’s just a little weird that they gave him a prize for it.” (I also liked Harold Meyerson’s take that the award should have gone to the American electorate for changing our country’s approach to the world.)
Yet the fact that the world outside our borders, or at least Europe, actually admires Obama was turned against him just as quickly as was Chicago’s defeat. On our blog, Mike Gerson wrote: “Europe's slobbering embrace of Obama is really the worship of its own reflected image -- both are critical of America and elevate diplomatic process and promises over outcomes.” On his Right Matters discussion group elsewhere on our site, Ramesh Ponnuru wrote of the Nobel: “The function of the modern prize is not to award people for bringing about peace or advancing justice. It is to allow Western and especially European progressives to pat themselves on the back for their enlightened attitudes.”
(Original here.)
WashPost
Reading the latest issue of The Economist magazine this weekend, I was struck by a great contradiction in the response to Chicago’s rebuff by the International Olympic Committee after President Obama’s intervention on the one side, and the response to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama on the other.
The Economist went to press before the Nobel announcement, so its article on Obama was rather downbeat. Under the headline “Down in the Valley,” the magazine reported, accurately, that Chicago’s defeat led Obama’s “gleeful critics” to depict the failure “as a symptom of bigger defects, notably Mr. Obama’s overweening self-belief, and the naïve trust they say he invests in unreliable foreigners.” The magazine quoted conservative blogger Erick Erickson from the Red State website: “So much for improving America’s standing in the world, Barry O.”
But, of course, the Nobel committee's decision confirmed the success the president has had in “improving America’s standing in the world.” David Ignatius caught it right, I thought, when he wrote on this blog: “America was too unpopular under Bush. The Nobel committee is expressing a collective sigh of relief that America has rejoined the global consensus. They’re right. It’s a good thing. It’s just a little weird that they gave him a prize for it.” (I also liked Harold Meyerson’s take that the award should have gone to the American electorate for changing our country’s approach to the world.)
Yet the fact that the world outside our borders, or at least Europe, actually admires Obama was turned against him just as quickly as was Chicago’s defeat. On our blog, Mike Gerson wrote: “Europe's slobbering embrace of Obama is really the worship of its own reflected image -- both are critical of America and elevate diplomatic process and promises over outcomes.” On his Right Matters discussion group elsewhere on our site, Ramesh Ponnuru wrote of the Nobel: “The function of the modern prize is not to award people for bringing about peace or advancing justice. It is to allow Western and especially European progressives to pat themselves on the back for their enlightened attitudes.”
(Original here.)
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