Rising from the ashes

I think this is about right.

This is an odd award. You'd expect it to come later in Obama's presidency and tied to some particular event or accomplishment. But the unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world, the 'hyper-power' as the French have it, became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it's a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was 'normal history' rather than dark aberration.

The award, obviously, will be of no help to Obama domestically. But it certainly does indicate that the majority of American voters are vindicated in choosing the foreign policy direction Obama laid out during the campaign. Normally, American voters aren't that interested in foreign policy debates during U.S. presidential elections, but I think in this case they were repudiating the Bush era policies that McCain would have continued no less than the Norwegian Nobel Committee has.