The news that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize today has generated a variety of reactions, with great surprise being perhaps the most common. Reasonable people can disagree about who should have received the award, and TFN takes no position on that question. But we think most Americans — except perhaps those at the extremes, like certain members of our State Board of Education — might take some pride in seeing the leader of our nation recognized by the Nobel Committee.
So an e-mail sent out late this afternoon by the campaign of Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst disappointed us:
This morning, after just eight months in office, President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. The President now joins a list of distinguished winners including Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama.
But did the President deserve this honor that was not even bestowed upon President Ronald Reagan, a President who ended the Cold War and whose efforts led to the fall of the Berlin Wall?
Please take a minute to let me know your opinion.
Thanks for your patriotism,
Sincerely,
David Dewhurst
Lieutenant Governor
“Thanks for your patriotism?” With all due restpect, Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, a “p” word did occur to us when we read your e-mail. But “patriotism” wasn’t the one.
I’m curious to whom is the Lt. Governor’s email directed? And what is his definition of “patriotism”?
This just proves my point as to the level of Obama hatred there is in this country. Whether Pres. Obama deserves the Nobel prize or not isn’t really anyone’s call but the Nobel committee itself. But that Obama’s opponents are this petty and so full of hate and dread speaks worse of them than it does of Obama. Couldn’t they have just said a weak “Congratulations” and move on? No, of course not.
And, by the way, it wasn’t Pres. Reagan who “ended” the Cold War. The demise of the Cold War had more to do with Pres. Gorbachev, the high cost of the arm’s race to the Soviets, and the U.S.S.R.’s own implosion, partly due to their war in Afghanistan. (The U.S. might take a lesson from the Soviets and the British before them except that the U.S. has a psychotic dread of learning anything from history. We don’t even LIKE history. The TX SBOE is evidence of that).
Remember the good ole days when winning the Olympics and a Nobel prize were cause for national pride?
Now the Far Right is happy to lose the Olympics and mad that the President won a Nobel Prize.
And what did he win it for? Of all things, offering hope that the US will begin to address the most pressing global issues and changing world opinion about the United States from extremely negative to very positive in only 8 months.
What a nutty, and shameful, group. It is a sad commentary on the Republicans and the goofy Far Right.
Cytocop is right about the Soviet Union. The son of famous Soviet expert and diplomat Jack Matlock was a friend of mine back in my middle school days. Read about daddy Jack here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_F._Matlock,_Jr.
One night long after those early years, Jack showed up at my university to give an evening talk on the Soviet Union. This was about 1979-1980. It was the kind of talk where you would have expected to see 300-500 people show up, but only a small handfull of people came—maybe 15-20. So, we had Jack all to ourselves in a really warm, close, and friendly environment. Jack came armed with a lot of information and statistics and really opened up—not top secret but still “insider stuff” that you would have probably never seen in Time or Newsweek. Basically, in his talk, Jack used all of this information to weave a wonderful tapestry about how the Soviet Union was primed for internal collapse under its own weight in the next few decades. It was a stark picture that ran counter to the news of the day in the various media outlets. You know—the Soviet Union as the vast, impregnable, monolithic fortress with thousands of nuclear weapons. As it turned out, that night was prophetic, which is to say that the insider Soviet experts had already concluded that the 1991 Soviet collpase was going to occur pretty much regardless. The only question was what year?
However, I will give Ronald Reagan some credit here. When the Soviets got in trouble and started their downward internal slide, I think a President like Jimmy Carter would have backed off on the anti-Soviet rhetoric and given them the space they needed to heal their wounds in certain places, which might have led to a nuclear war. Reagan gave them no breathing room on that downward slide and by doing so pretty much assured death by suffocation.
Regarding Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, it’s very hard to say. It’s like speculating what JFK would have done with Vietnam. Some say he would have pulled us out during his first or second term, which would have been long before Ford did. Who can say with certainty what anyone would have done about anything or what would have led to a nuclear war? We were headed that way during the Cuban missile crisis, and a betting person would have betted on nuclear war, yet it didn’t happen.
Why is the Lt. Governor of Texas weighing in on matters of national and international diplomacy? Talk about boxing out of his weight class! Would it kill him to focus on issues that actually pertain to his job description? Is that too much to ask?
the level of counter intuitive gibberish coming out of the GOP white patriarch camp is breath taking in its arrogance – they must be petrified that their bullying dominance is coming to an end – ship of fools
It seems to me President Obama “got it.” The rest of the sane world wants the United States to be a leader now that the GOP anger and meanness are no longer in the driver’s seats. The prize is for what is expected from Obama in the future. The rest of the world hopes for a better future. The GOP wants only to get back in power so they can continue tearing everything down in our country as the 8 years of Bush did. As a former RepublicanI find it incredible that there aren’t more in the GOP who can see what’s happened and what is needed.
In 1932 Franklin Roosevelt said, “Now that you have elected me you must build a coalition to make me do what I promised in my campaign.” Wouldn’t it be nice if we could help Obama and our country by doing for Obama what Roosevelt asked?
I wonder what genus in Dewhurst’s office decided to do this email survey? Other than rallying their conservative base (which is pretty much all Republican elected officials know how to do) what was the point? It appears to me that David Dewhurst is just another petty Republican who is unfamiliar with the word “congratulations”.
Ronald Reagan did not have to follow George Bush and try to clean up his mess like President Obama has. How come the only presidents who have received the Nobel Prize has been Democrats.? (Woodrow Wilson, Carter, and Obama). You can’t count Ted Roosevelt, because he could never be nominated for President in today’s Republican Party. When it comes to nuclear weapons, may they all ‘RUST IN PEACE”. Robert Bohmfalk, Seguin
Charles is right, the Political Science professors at my, not very prestigious university were saying the same thing in the late ’70- early ’80’s; the Soviet Union simply would not hold together for much longer. Reagan didn’t so much bring down Soviet Union as he happened to be in office when the Soviet Union imploded on its own.
As an ordained minister and a former teacher now retired, this just confirms my deeply held opinion that the Republican party is now (and has been for several years) the voice that to me is the voice of the Anti-Christ.
They apparently arewilling to destroy this great country to force their viscious hatred upon us all.
Texas has its share of idiots; unfortunately some wield power, or want to. It’s a sad state of affairs.
Reagan not only did not stop the cold war or bring down the Berlin wall, but he started the degeneration of this govt. and the condition of this country. He closed institutions that kept people that were mentally unstable , and threw them out on the streets where they were not able to cope and became homeless and sometimes violent. He facilitated the beginning of the decline in the standards we as a country stood for.
As for your stupid question, why do you care anyway? They sure aren’t going to take it back because you don’t like it. And as Robert mentions above, it is not republicans who get the Nobel Prize for peace. That’s probably because they have never worked for peace cause it doesn’t make them any money.
The TX Lt Gov needs to be reminded that the ending of the Cold War had more to do with Gorbachev than Reagan. Obama has not yet really earned his Nobel, but the savvy Norwegians are to be commended for recognizing his potential and for giving him a boost for being quite other than the Bush/Cheney/Rove gang he replaced. — I am reminded of a business trip I made to Oslo early in 2001. When I had to make some remarks to those gathered, most of them Europeans, I sid that they may have noticed that I was wearing a small Canadian flag pin on my jacket lapel. I said that was to disguise the fact that I am a citizen of a country that had just had a judicial coup d’etat. The Norwegians especially got a good laugh out of that.
The Republicans have yelled this myth so much that people forget that — with the exception of Poland — where the Pope was the important external factor — the fall of Communism, the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall all happened during Bush 41’s Presidency, not Reagan’s.