The Big Question: Will President Obama's Nobel prize speech help him back home?

Some of the nation's top political commentators, legislators and intellectuals offer some insight into the biggest question burning up the blogosphere today.

Today's question:

Will President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech help him politically in the U.S.?

Brent White, associate law professor at the University of Arizona, said:

It won't help or hurt.  At this point, most people have strong feelings about President Obama one way or the other - and those who don't, aren't paying attention.  President Obama's acceptance speech will be selectively perceived according to an individual's emotional (read "political") predispositions.

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, said:

Americans understand that the Nobel recognizes the new perception, world-wide, of the moral legitimacy of the United States, and that has political consequences.

Hal Lewis, physicist and professor at U.C. Santa Barbara, said:

Only if people confuse the Nobel Peace prize, awarded by the Norwegian parliament (made up of politicians), with the real Nobel prizes, awarded by the Swedish Nobel Committee for significant intellectual achievements.

Justin Raimondo, editorial director for Antiwar.com, said:

I may be dating myself, but Obama's speech brings to mind a comic book -- yes, a comic book -- from the 1960s. "Superman" comics had a story line about a place called "Bizarro World," where up is down, right is left, and water runs uphill. In short, a place where the laws of nature -- and common sense -- were inverted. Ever since 9/11, I've suspected that we may have fallen into this alternate universe, because it appears (to me, at least) that we -- i.e. the US government -- have inverted the laws of reason and morality.

Now it appears as if the phenomenon has gone international, even infecting the Nobel committee: I can come up with no other explanation for their decision to give the Nobel "Peace" prize to a U.S .President who has just announced a years-long military campaign which is killilng innocents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and which threatens the peace of the world as no other conflict has before.

Prof. Stephen Walt, writing in his column on Foreignpolicy.com, has perhaps given us the best advice on what to do in such a situation as this:

"Instead of spending a lot of time parsing Obama's latest speech -- to no one's surprise, it was thoughtful, self-effacing, nuanced, balanced, eloquent, lucid, well-delivered, etc. etc. (yawn) -- I suggest we focus our attention henceforth on what he actually does."

Of course, I haven't answered the question, merely expressed my opinion about the awarding of the prize, so let me say this: the Nobel farce underscores a larger and much more disturbing farce to the American people, and those who still have their wits about them are bound to see not only the absurdity but the danger in it. Elected as the "antiwar" candidate, President Obama will now spend most of his first (and, hopefully, last) term as the "war president." We will be told that we're fighting a "just war," that we're "waging peace." The American people know this is bollocks -- and the awarding of the Nobel to the warmonger-in-chief dramatizes this in a way that only the terminally partisan amongst us can fail to recognize.

Dick Morris, political commentator, said:

No.  It would have been a big win for him had he not committed the extra troops to Afghanistan. Now, in light of that decision, his speech is a kind of testament to failed dreams and dashed hopes of the left that he would be any different.

Paul Kawika Martin, policy and political director of Peace Action, said:

It's hard to see how it helps him politically in the States.  As President Obama admits, he has a tremendous opportunity to advance world peace, but he has yet to live up to the Nobel Peace Prize.  Although Peace Action applauds him for stating a vision of a world without nuclear weapons and increasing diplomacy with Iran, we believe he has missed opportunities to advance non-military solutions to conflict by dramatically increasing troop levels in Afghanistan and continuing the growth of the military budget.  We challenge him to live up to the honor of being a Nobel laureate.

Since early this year, public opinion has shifted against the Afghanistan war.  It seems that the President's new plan has not swayed the public, but has alienated his base more.  Voters' opinions of Obama will change with deeds not words.

The United States accounts for approximately 45% of world military expenditures.  We maintain more than 800 foreign military bases, and our top industrial export is weaponry.  Although President Obama says he seeks a world free of nuclear weapons, the United States still has a nuclear arsenal of more than 10,000 warheads. Quoting Martin Luther King and Gandhi is laudable, but clearly they would not be escalating in Afghanistan nor funding the military versus diplomacy, humanitarian and development at a 12 to 1 ratio.  Rhetoric goes only so far

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said:

The challenge for Obama is that the speech, the Nobel Prize and the trip to hang with European royalty in Sweden or Norway or some vaguely foreign type place reminds everyone that he isn’t in America focused on jobs.

Hey Obama. Remember the recession?  You used to talk about this as if you cared.

Now Obama wants to tax your health insurance and shut down your coal mine job and reorganize Afghanistan…..focusing on everything except the continuing loss of jobs.  He passed the spending bill in January—and things got worse.  He hasn’t even apologized for that wasted $787 billion that was followed by several million fewer jobs.

Come home. Stop talking about $2.5 trillion dollar increases in health care costs…..if this was supposed to reduce health care costs--what are the taxes and spending for—shouldn’t we be getting a rebate or something?  Stop talking about killing coal jobs.  And your wanting to be mayor of Kabul is not much of an improvement over Bush’s recent six years as Mayor of Baghdad.

Bernie Quigley, political commentator, said:

I don’t think so. He is in trouble. As Dick Morris said a few weeks back here, when the President falls below 50% he loses his effectiveness. Obama needs a fresh start. One suggestion: Bring in Mike Bloomberg, Bill Daley and Arnold Schwarzenegger as a conspicuously new “front line” to bring style, élan and bipartisan competence to a new PR offensive and put them in charge of the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. And change the name. This gets a lot of laughs up here in the workplaces. It sounds like the Politburo of the Khrushchev era named and designed it. This expensive and questionable project has so far been formless; a corporation from nowhere without a plan or a CEO. Focus it in Chicago or Indiana or some other centralized American place outside the Beltway which doesn’t resonate Washington bureaucracy. And may I suggest replacing Secretary Clinton with Jon Huntsman, Jr.? This would do three things: Remove favoritism and return professionalism to State, put our relationship with China in primary focus and free Obama from his strange and unfortunate submission to party dominance. The old party hacks appear to be pulling his strings. It is his party now. Not Clintons. He can still do this. There is still time. But it needs some drastic action.