Picking the Most Visible of 205 Names

By WALTER GIBBS
NYT

OSLO — The Norwegian Nobel Committee spent seven months winnowing the résumés of dissident monks, human rights advocates, field surgeons and other nominees — 205 names in all, most of them obscure — before deciding to give the Nobel Peace Prize to the most famous man on the planet, Barack Obama.

“The question we have to ask,” Thorbjorn Jagland, the committee’s new chairman, said after the prize was announced on Friday, “is, ‘Who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world?’ And who has done more than Barack Obama?”

While in recent decades the selection process has produced many winners better known for their suffering or their environmental zeal than for peacemaking, Mr. Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister, said he intended to incorporate a more practical approach.

“It’s important for the committee to recognize people who are struggling and idealistic,” Mr. Jagland said in an interview, “but we cannot do that every year. We must from time to time go into the realm of realpolitik. It is always a mix of idealism and realpolitik that can change the world.”

(Original here.)