Many Surprised By Obama's Nobel Win

WASHINGTON (USATODAY) - In the nation's capital on Friday, President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize set off another political war.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and other leading Democrats hailed the prize as a vindication for a president who has been running into some difficult political sledding in recent months. The chairman of the Republican Party questioned what the president had done to deserve it. Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh called the award to Obama "an embarrassment," and a Democratic Party spokesman suggested the president's GOP critics were siding with the Taliban in questioning the merit of the award.

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There was also some non-partisan perplexity from political analysts who wondered how a leader in office less than a year could have won one of the world's most prestigious prizes.

"I was stunned," said Aaron David Miller, former Mideast peace negotiator and author of the upcoming book, Can America Have Another Great President? He suggested that the jury's decision to honor Obama so early in his term cheapened the prize. "It really does undermine the notion of excellence and greatness."

While agreeing that the Nobel Prize is usually awarded for past achievements, presidential scholar Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution said the judges may have been investing in Obama, rather than rewarding him for what he has done so far.

"It shows the Nobel committee's audacity of hope," quipped Hess, borrowing from one of Obama's book titles. "Hope for future achievement."

Obama said he was "both surprised and deeply humbled" to receive the prize and did not feel deserving to be among "transformative figures" who were among previous honorees.

"But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women and all Americans want to build, a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents," he said.

The award underscores Obama's continuing high popularity abroad even as he is struggling politically at home. In a Quinnipiac Poll released last week, 49% of those surveyed said they approved of the way Obama is handling foreign policy, down from 56% in March. Obama's numbers aren't likely to improve as the president wrestles with how to respond to a worsening situation in Afghanistan, predicted the poll's assistant director, Peter Brown. "Anything he does will be controversial," he said.

Obama's political opponents have tried in the past to turn his appeal to foreign audiences into a political liability, with some success. After candidate Obama drew more than 200,000 people to a speech in Berlin last summer, GOP opponent John McCain began running ads that mocked him as an empty celebrity.

The Nobel Prize "only continues to feed a caricature that a lot of Republicans will continue to leverage to their benefit," Keith Appell, a GOP media strategist, said Friday.

The idea that the Nobel jurors in Oslo were giving a seal of approval to Obama's election elicited sharply different reactions from leading Democrats and Republicans. Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, saw the award as a sign of "the world's yearning for American leadership" and the president's success in "reintroducing America to the rest of the world."

But Limbaugh, in an e-mail exchange with Politico, saw it is a sign that "the elites of the world are urging Obama ... to not do the surge in Afghanistan, not take action against Iran and its nuclear program and to basically continue his intentions to emasculate the United States."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said no one at the White House knew Obama had been nominated for the prize, which has been won now by four U.S. presidents. The most recent of them was Democrat Jimmy Carter, who won the prize in 2002, decades after he had left office.

On Friday, Carter called the award to Obama a "bold statement of international support for his vision and commitment." Former president George W. Bush had no comment on the news, said his spokesman, David Sherzer.

Other reaction divided sharply along partisan lines. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., issued statements congratulating the president. Pelosi called the Nobel Prize "a testament" to Obama's leadership. Reid called it a tribute to Obama's " dedication to a new type of politics based on hope instead of fear."

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, however, sharply questioned whether Obama deserved the honor. "The real question Americans are asking is, 'What has President Obama actually accomplished?' " Steele said.

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That prompted an angry retort from Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse. "The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists," he said, referring to statements by the Taliban and Hamas that criticized the award to Obama.

Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, argued that Obama already has earned recognition for his efforts "to strengthen international cooperation,"

The Nobel Prize, Berman said, "validates the president's approach to tough transnational challenges such as global warming and the spread of nuclear arms. And it celebrates his steady efforts to improve America's standing around the world."