Free Republic

President Barack Obama’s first act as a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2009 — nine months after he took the oath of office — was to try to wriggle out of accepting it. “The morning the prize was announced, his staff investigated whether anyone had failed to travel to Oslo to receive their prize,” writes Nobel insider Geir Lundestad in “The World’s Most Prestigious Prize” (Oxford), out this month. Apparently, the president was among the 61 percent of Americans who believed he didn’t deserve it. “It is true, Obama did not do much before winning,” Lundestad, 74, a member of...

Anyone with half an ounce of brains immediately knew in 2009 that the Nobel Peace Prize committee was making itself look foolish for giving Barack Obama its top award even though he had only been president for about five minutes. Now the group's former secretary is admitting that the whole thing was a huge mistake. Nobel's former secretary, Geir Lundestad, told the media that he thought giving Obama the award would spur him to great accomplishments. Instead, Obama did nothing of note over the next eight years. Lundestad addressed the foolhardy decision in his recently published autobiography, according to the...