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The clock has backed down

There is no pragmatically single standard for awarding the Nobel
Peace Prize.  There may be a formal one, but history shows a
bewildering variety of recipients.  And that is good.  Single-
mindedness is a crippling virtue.  Now we get to debate again!

We can put aside whatever Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh
and John Boehner have to say:  they only know how to say they
hope we don't get the Olympics, that health care is too expensive,
and that Barack Obama has not yet cured cancer, found an
alternative to Oxycontin, or caused a smile on Ann Coulter's face.

What has Barack Obama done to cause him
to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? 

Do you recall the Doomsday Clock symbolically used by Atomic
Scientists to indicate how close we were to mutually assured
destruction by a fusilade of nuclear bombs.  The time it showed
for decades was just a few minutes to our last midnight. 

If, instead of nuclear destruction--but including that, too--one
were to think about the relationship of the United State to the rest
of the semi-civilized world, we would have to admit that during
the years of the Bush administration, we were living in a hostile
world in which the arrogance of our own nation put us at odds,
not only with nations like North Korea and Iraq, but of France
and Germany and almost everybody else.  It has been an
extraordinary period of arrogance and distrust.  We earned it.

If we think of that situation, or mood, as a kind of clock, we
have been living at about five minutes to midnight.  The election
of Barack Obama almost immediately, not only stopped the
forward motion of the clock, but drove the hands far back.
We have begun to speak to Muslim nations, to mend our fences
with our longtime allies in Europe, to open honest discussions
about the health of the earth's climate, to negotiate with Cuba,
to speak directly to nations that we have refused to show respect
for (whether they deserve it, or not), to get serious about
Palestinians and Israelis and their post-Berlin wall, and settlements.

A good share of that has happened because of Barack Obama.
The end results are not in, and some may never arrive, but
the expectations have changed.  The possibilities have changed.
There is a guarded, but grand, new hope for change.  The
possibilities have changed, within which the world has changed
or, at least, is beginning to hope for change.  Obama did that,
just by being who he was, saying what he said, by getting
elected, and by immediately showing he was serious about it.

The clock has backed down, giving us more time.
That is why they are giving him a Nobel Peace Prize.

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