The Bowdoin Orient

On December 10, 2010, I would like a Nobel Peace Prize. I already hit up Expedia and got my ticket to Oslo. If you want to join my entourage, I'll put you on the waiting list. I think I deserve the Nobel Prize. I think I know a lot of people that deserve one, as well. I say this because it seems that all you have to do to get the Nobel Peace Prize these days is to do your job. It was announced last week that the Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, and whom I admit is far more handsome and debonair the gentleman than I, has won this year's prize.

The other sitting U.S. Presidents to be Nobel Peace Prize laureates were Teddy Roosevelt, who won the Prize in 1906 for ending the Russo-Japanese war, and Woodrow Wilson, who received the award in 1919 for creating the framework for the League of Nations. I'm pretty sure that Obama has not stopped any major wars (yet) or created a new forum for preventing conflict. On the other hand, Teddy did single-handedly start the Spanish-American War and quit his assistant secretaryship to lead his Rough Rider Harvard buds for a nice round of conquest in Cuba, and Woody Wilson's little Justice League never actually existed. It seems like the prerequisite for a sitting American president to win the Nobel Prize is not too high a benchmark. I'll omit Jimmy Carter because he won more than twenty years post-presidency.

Barack Obama is less than one year into his presidency and, no offense, but he really hasn't done too much more than win the world's biggest popularity contest and to plaster every car with a CHANGE sticker. However, Barack Obama has done his job. On the other hand, I think that most people with a job are expected to do their job. As the President the United States, one is expected to perform certain functions such as pick up the cool red phones and talk to other popular people in other countries, and it seems that this is what Barack Obama has won this prize (and the 1.4 million big ones) for. Therefore, I think Obama should give a decent cut of that loot to the guy who is primarily responsible for him winning the prize: George Walker Bush.

That's right, Dubbya won Obama the Nobel Peace Prize and deserves a little more than an animated e-mail "Thank You!" card. If it wasn't for Bush being a real American and refusing to play nice with terrorists and (even worse) Europeans, our socialist Scandinavian friends would never have given Obama their Nobel Prize for his return to the status quo. George W. Bush may not have done much to, "Be the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses," but he is the person who did the most or best work for making Barack Obama seem like that person.

I'm just here to make sure that credit is given where credit is due. If George W. doesn't get his name on this award, he may have to pull a Jimmy Carter and spend the next few decades trying to get people to forget that his reign in office didn't work out too well, so let's do a nice thing and spare the guy having to rack up a billion airline miles flying back and forth to the Middle East. After all, that causes pollution and fellow Nobel Peace Prize recipient Al Gore would not approve.

Funny, but true, story: I saw Jimmy Carter on a plane once, and he was sleeping in first class but I really wanted a signature, so I woke him up to sign my passport. His secret service guys were not happy.

While I would of course like to congratulate President Obama on receiving this honor, I'm also a bit scared, and you should be too. Why? Because many of the winners of this award received it for their life's work: Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, and the fourteenth Dalai Lama. Hopefully, for President Obama, it's not all down hill from here, and maybe he can do something legitimate and win a second one a few years down the line.

Michael Rothschild is a member of the Class of 2010.

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