(Oct. 9) -- Aspirational politics can be inspirational. That was apparently reason enough for the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the 2009 Peace Prize to President Barack Obama.
The honor seemed almost to embarrass the White House and immediately fed the partisan pundit fires in the U.S. The puzzled and heated domestic reaction raises the question of whether the Nobel committee had any clue how controversial its 2009 choice would be in the U.S.
If not, it is only the latest instance of a gulf in perception between the two sides of the Atlantic.
"Europeans tend to see the Nobel Peace Prize as the best honor that could be bestowed on anyone, whereas for Americans it's nice -- but sort of a European award," says Bates Gill, an American who directs the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. "What it stands for -- internationalism, peace, global affairs -- aren't at the top of many Americans' agenda."
The Norwegian Nobel Committee acknowledged that it didn't base its surprising choice so much on what Obama has done in nine short months in office as on the hope of what he will do. It praised the president for his commitment to international diplomacy and his "vision of a world free of nuclear arms." But perhaps the key phrase of its announcement was this: "Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics."
Without mentioning it, that phrase evokes the name of the man Europeans deem largely responsible for the old climate: George W. Bush. The European public's perception of U.S. foreign policy has undergone a meteoric boost in a single year. Last month's annual Trans-Atlantic Trends poll of international public opinion found that Europeans approved of Obama's foreign policy at four times the rate they did Bush's just one year before.
In 2008 only 12 percent of Germans approved of the way Bush handled international policies; this year 92 percent hailed Obama's approach, according to the respected study, administered by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Just as Bush was never as universally demonized in the U.S. as he was in Europe, Obama could only dream of approval ratings like that at home.
Indeed, numbers like that could even be a liability: No politician can be entirely comfortable being more popular abroad than he is at home. The ecstatic reaction Obama garnered in July 2008 speaking in Berlin became a point of attack for his opponent, John McCain; now his domestic opponents are keen to cast the Nobel Prize in the same light.
Many reactions from Europe stressed this inspirational effect of Obama. For French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the award "confirms, finally, America's return to the hearts of the people of the world." Mikhail Gorbachev -- who won his Nobel Prize in 1990 but remains far more popular abroad than at home -- said, "What Obama did during his presidency is a big signal; he gave hope."
For many Americans, being in good favor abroad is, frankly, gravy. Polls regularly put the economy and health care far above any foreign affairs as prime concerns of the electorate. In the United States, Obama has to grapple with divisive, polarizing issues. His stewardship of a battered economy and his attempts to broker an acceptable solution to the U.S. health care problem loom largely as for his reputation as how he decides to wage a difficult war in Afghanistan. For that reason alone, Americans are less prone to see Obama as a symbol.
The Nobel Committee's decision is a European vote of confidence on the way this particular American president is setting the global agenda.
"In a way it's a courageous choice, but it's also a risky one," says Gill. "It might put new pressure on countries like Burma and Iran to deal with Obama. But having been hailed as a man of peace, it could also limit his freedom of maneuver."
However the award's effect plays out in foreign relations, the consternation it engendered is a reminder that international acclaim only goes so far at home.
