President Obama
President Obama wins the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
I must admit I initially didn’t see what Obama did to deserve this award, especially in the first ten days of his presidency. After all, the nomination deadline was February 1, 2009. Then I did a little research. According to the Timeline of the Presidency of Barack Obama, In the first ten days of his presidency, Obama accomplished the following:
- January 20 – Minutes after the administration of the Oath of Office, Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, issues an order suspending last-minute federal regulations pushed through by outgoing President George W. Bush, planning to review everything still pending. In one of his first official acts, President Obama issues a proclamation declaring January 20, 2009 a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation. Obama enacts a pay freeze for Senior White House Staff making more than $100,000 per year, as well as announces stricter guidelines regarding lobbyists in an effort to raise the ethical standards of the White House.
- January 21 – Obama revokes Executive Order 13233, which had been initiated by the Bush administration to limit access to the records of former presidents. At 7:35 EST on January 21, Obama retakes the Presidential Oath of Office, again administered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, before four print journalists. Obama issues instructions to all agencies and departments in his administration to “adopt a presumption in favor” of Freedom of Information Act requests, reversing earlier policy set by former Attorney General John Ashcroft.
- January 22 – President Obama signs an executive order announcing the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp within a year, and signs a prohibition on using torture and other illegal coercive techniques, such as waterboarding, during interrogations and detentions, requiring the Army field manual to be used as a guide. He issues an executive order entitled “Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel”, governing the limitations on hiring of employees by the executive branch to qualified individuals only, and placing very tight restrictions on lobbying in the White House.
- January 23 – Obama ends the funding ban for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad, also known as the “gag rule” or the Mexico City Policy. He orders the first two Predator airstrikes of his presidency. (See Airstrikes in Pakistan).
- January 24 – Obama produces his first weekly Saturday morning video address available on whitehouse.gov and YouTube, (like those released during his transition period) a policy compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats.
- January 26 – Obama signs his first two Presidential Memoranda concerning energy independence, directing the Department of Transportation to establish higher fuel efficiency standards before 2011 models are released and the allowing states to raise their emissions standards above the national standard. That night he gives his first formal interview as president to Al Arabiya.
- January 28 – Obama makes his first visit to The Pentagon as President, meeting with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
- January 29 – Obama signs his first bill, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which promotes fair pay regardless of sex, race, or age. Lilly Ledbetter, the plaintiff in the employment discrimination case Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. joined Barack and Michelle Obama at the signing ceremony.
- January 30 – Obama signs a presidential memorandum launching the Middle Class Working Families Task Force to be led by Vice President Joe Biden.
- January 31 – Obama speaks at the Alfalfa Club annual banquet.
It’s all clear now.
Congratulations, President Obama!
Update: It was pointed out to me on Facebook that the selection committee can consider more than accomplishments up to the date of nomination. During February and March, the committee created a short list. So, rather than ten days, the committee was able to consider Obama’s accomplishments up to March 31 — ten whole weeks!
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Visit the Timeline of the Presidency of Barack Obama on Wikipedia for references, and maybe even more reasons for this auspicious award, as the entry continues to be updated.
I'm Brent Logan and I've been here since 2004, writing about family, food, and fun. You can contact me at 
Actually, to be completely fair, the Committee didn’t vote until Obama had been in office for about 9 months, but it still seems premature to me. Also, I think it may only make his life more difficult. Now all those who are against him, both in this country (the birthers and the Just Say No crowd) and overseas have a much bigger target and infinite more impetus for seeing to it that he fails at everythibng he does, simply because he is now much bigger ‘game’, so to speak.
A agree with Marilyn….a little premature
….isn’t some of this wonderfulness part of his job description and part of what he promised to do if he was to elected? So if I do what I promise at work do I get a Noble Peace Prize?
This entire bruhaha regarding his win reminds me of something that happened to me early in my freshman year in high school. I had just come off a big basketball win in grade school (our team won the all-city championship). I was the high scorer in nearly every game I played in grade school. Of course, placing me under the basket helped a lot, since I was 5-foot-10 when I graduated. My peers referred to me as ’stretch,’ never using my real name.
I was sitting in a general science classroom, waiting for the bell to ring. Somebody from my grade school walked by me toward a vacant seat. As he passed, he said, “hi Stretch.” I responded appropriately. The teacher heard the exchange and promptly started chewing me out for allowing the peer to address me in such a disrespectful manner. I promptly reminded her that I was not responsible for what came out of the mouth of other people, so why was she ragging on me? She continued until the bell rang and she started her classroom spiel.
The same applies in this case. Why are people ragging on Obama about something over which he had no control that was obviously done by another person?
Marilyn, I don’t think I was “ragging” on Obama. If anyone, it would be on the selection committee. What was it that Obama did prior to March 31 that allowed him to remain on the short list? I think it’s the same thing that resulted in the award itself: he instills hope in many. I guess that was enough for the committee.
I agree with your first statement, though: it was premature. Give him a chance to accomplish something concrete.
I think your original item reeked of sarcasm. That is what I was responding to in my second comment. If the Nobel Committee is trying to influence U.S. foreign policy, which I assume is the case, then they might have more positive influence by simply writing an op-ed piece and submitting it for publication in the NY Times, Washington Post, or some other high-profile U.S. newspaper and properly identifying themselves in the piece so we all know what they are about and why they are taking the position they are taking.
So now we know that the individual components of the 5-member selectuion committee is comprised of left-leaning people. But that is no surprise, since they gave the awalrd to Al Gore awhile back, which sort of tipped their hands regarding their politics.
Reeked? Reeked?! Oh, okay… :-D
Still, I don’t believe it’s fair to say that I was “ragging” on Obama. I don’t expect any president, not even President Obama, to do anything in the first ten days of office worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize short list. To win it in his first year is, well — let’s allow Obama speak for himself on this issue:
I can pay the same favor to those who selected Obama:
In other words, the committee didn’t select Obama because of his accomplishments.
To conclude: sarcasm, yes. Directed at Obama, no.
This particular Nobel Prize has had a lot of recipients that I would regard as questionable. I’ll start with Mother Teresa in that regard. Here we have a woman who eschewed birth control when everybody with one synapse either knows or suspects that many wars have been started over inadequate arable land for feeding a given population’s people. When drought or other crop failures occur, the only way a Third World country can feed its people is to either kill off a marginalized portion of its population or invade an adjoining country with better farming conditions. That’s just common sense.
So, what does she do? Set up shop in one of the most poverty-ridden countries in the world, house the poorest people who are clearly dying, then give them a pat on the head and tell them that Jesus loves them when they are writhing in pain, without so much as an aspirin to ease that pain. Of course, when she got sick, she flew first class to America to get Cadillac medical help by the best doctors in the world. Never mind that that money could have been used to alleviate the suffering of hundreds of people in her own ‘clinic’ in India.
Now, what does all that have to do with peace, when spending that money on condoms to be distributed in the slums of Mumbai would have stopped the suffering and death of perhaps thousands of people over time? Peace, my great aunt’s knuckles!
Um, wow. Just, wow…
For an alternate view on Mother Teresa, one can read Wikipedia.
Maybe if she’d share her clinic with Jack Kervorkian she would have been worthy?
I would have beeb happy if she had flown coach to get medical help in this coutry and used the savings to provide her dying patients with a few pain killers so they could die with a bit of their dignity left. What in the world made her think people writhing in pain would be comforted with a pat on the head and a message about her god kissing them, when they already had some 30 million gods that were unable to give them any more comfort than her god with a hispanic name? They call that hubris, coupled with a total lack of empathy or compassion.
Another brilliant choice for the Peace Prize was 1939, when Adolph Huitler got ther award.
I’m much less willing to judge Mother Teresa after her 45 years of service.
And, invoking Godwin’s Law, I’m closing comments for this post.