Obama Nobel Peace Prize reveals American ignorance of elite politics

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Someone wrote a comment on my YouTube video - those are the only one's I read because they're a mix of the stupid and the great, but seldom psychotic - regarding President Obama's winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize that essentially speeches are meaningless.

I chuckled.

I immediately recalled the teachings of my favorite book on politics the "Irony of Democracy" by Thomas R. Dye and L. Harmon Ziglar. Dye and Ziglar take an "elites versus masses" lens to view politics and come away with a view that's worthy of study itself. Essentially, the elite ruling class exists as a needed counter to the chaos of democracy and "mob rule". From this perspective there's little difference between Democrats and Republicans.

(As an aside, I'm an elitist who believes that such a "ruling class" is not only necessary but desired if only to give the masses as set of "human guidelines" on how to conduct ones self. Thus, anyone who's racist or any "ist" is not part of this class and considered a socially unacceptable part of mass culture. While some may claim that elitists are sexist, elite culture is not immune to inclusive change; women and minorities make up a far greater part of the overall power structure today than in the past.)

Dye and Ziglar instructed me that, far from just a figurehead, a president sets the tone and moves policy more often than not just by a speech or a statement.

That presidential comment is picked up by the media and spread to the masses for consumption in such a way that the President essentially commands what we as a society pays at least some attention to. In Obama's case this has been global warming, nuclear proliferation, race relations, and United States and Muslim relations.

The awarding of the Nobel Prize to Obama has catapulted him into a rarefied air that makes him almost untouchable. President Obama has been anointed an elite leader on a World scale and is now someone who must be heard not just because he's President of The United States, but because he's one who's Nobel Award says his actions and way and person signal positive change for the World.

The Nobel Foundation has set the table for Obama's emergence one the World stage as a difference maker. This puts the GOP in a double-bind: to oppose him now is to go against one of the most important leaders in the history of the free World and one who's America's leader. The Nobel award is a massive repudiation of several decades of Republican "Cowboy" diplomacy.

On Friday, some rather droll White House reporter was ranting on asking White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs why Ronald Reagan didn't gain such an award. The answer's easy: under President Reagan one had the uneasy feeling he could push the red button and get us all blown to hell at any time. He was trying to reduce what was then called "The Soviet Empire"; one doesn't get a peace prize of any kind for that objective.

Reagan's constant saber-rattling against the Soviet Union had many of us considering moving to Canada just to be out of the way of the possible results of his reckless abandon. While in the end Reagan essentially broke the economic back of Russia, he did so by paying the heavy price of having America considered the World's then-new bully.

President Clinton, for all of the attention he paid to the Mideast, didn't reach out to enemies in the diplomatic way President Obama has. And Clinton was so busy playing Neo-liberal to counter the Republicans in Congress he didn't fashion the kind of diplomatic strategy Obama has done. And while Clinton was called the First Black President, it's obvious that Obama's the real black president, but also part white, bringing a unique life experience to bear on the problems of America and the World.

Obama's Nobel Prize win, as much as Conservatives want it to be, is no accident. It came from the Presidents risk-taking work in making daring speeches and visits to dangerous places to bring disparate people together. Obama has done this over and over again.