Many were surprised by this morning’s news that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Nobel Peace Prizes don’t always go to popular choices. In fact, Adolf Hitler was nominated for a Nobel in 1939, but, of course, did not win.
In 2002, former President Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on Middle East peace but lost his 1980 re-election bid and left office an unpopular figure. Al Gore won the Prize after he lost the 2000 election.
Martin Luther King Jr. won in 1964, but was hardly beloved in many parts of the country at the time. Henry Kissinger won in 1973, not too long after war protesters burned his likeness in effigy; his co-recipient refused to even show up to accept the award.
Of course, some winners have been beloved icons, like Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela. Others won for grand works, like George Marshall, who drafted the plan to rebuild post-World War II Europe and Cordell Hull, who helped start the United Nations.
Two sitting U.S. presidents have won the Nobel Prize. President Woodrow Wilson won in 1919 for his work in support of the League of Nations (which became the UN). And President Teddy Roosevelt won in 1906 for his work to end the war between Japan and Russia.
These prizes were given to people who had a long body of national work behind them. Obama was nominated weeks after taking office. Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt never won the Nobel Peace Prize, although Churchill did win a Nobel Prize for literature. Mahatma Gandhi also never won a Nobel Peace Prize.
The White House said it was surprised by the selection, and many international voices were less charitable, calling it a joke and premature.
The Times of London said the award was “absurd”:
“The Nobel committee has made controversial awards before. Some have appeared to reward hope rather than achievement: the 1976 prize for the two peace campaigners in Northern Ireland, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, was clearly intended to send a signal to the two battling communities in Ulster. But the political influence of the two winners turned out, sadly, to be negligible.
“In the Middle East, the award to Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt in 1978 also looks, in retrospect, as naive as the later award to Yassir Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin — although it could be argued that both the Camp David and Oslo accords, while not bringing peace, were at least attempts to break the deadlock.
“Mr Obama’s prize is more likely, however, to be compared with the most contentious prize of all: the 1973 prize to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho for their negotiations to end the Vietnam war. Dr Kissinger was branded a warmonger for his support for the bombing campaign in Cambodia; and the Vietnamese negotiator was subsequently seen as a liar whose government never intended to honor a peace deal but was waiting for the moment to attack South Vietnam.”
Nobel facts from NobelPrize.org:
- The committeee has refused to award the Prize 19 times.
- Twenty-eight Prizes have been shared.
- Only one Peace Prize was shared by three people: Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin.
- The Peace Prize has been awarded to 96 individuals and 23 organizations, including the Red Cross (three times).
- Twelve of the 96 winners have been women.
This year, 205 names were submitted for the Nobel Peace Prize, including 33 organizations. That is the most names submitted for the Peace Prize ever. In 2005, there were 199 nominations, which was the record until now. It has not yet been revealed who submitted Obama’s name for the award.
