A former Nobel Prize official has President Obama saying “no take-backs!” as he calls the president’s 2009 award a failed effort, still confusing six years later.
“Even many of Obama’s supporters believed that the prize was a mistake,” writes former Nobel Prize committee secretary Geir Lundestad in a new book released this week.
The book explains that the award given to Obama in 2009 was meant to serve as a boost to the brand new President. Speaking to AP, Lundestad said the committee “thought it would strengthen Obama and it didn’t have this effect.”
But it didn’t take a Nobel Prize genius six years to come to that conclusion.
Back in October 2009 when the fresh-faced Obama was still moving around furniture in his brand new White House, the secretive committee announced that he would win the year’s coveted Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
The prize, which has historically been presented to people who have driven results, raised questions around the world as to why an exception was being made for a freshman president’s “efforts.” In 2009, the New York Times even commented that the prize stirred up “puzzlement around the globe.”
Even Obama admitted confusion, veiled as humility, upon accepting the award, saying in his Rose Garden speech, “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize.”
Although it seems that Lundestad is making the committee out to be an Indian Giver, there have been no allusions to the award being revoked. However, the official’s admission of the prize’s failure seems like just enough of a burn to have Obama putting the award back in the box for awhile.
