Friday, October 09, 2009

Comment Elsewhere: Obama: Officially Not Bush

Over at Progressive Historians discussion of this morning's Nobel Peace Prize announcement I wrote
What's to be baffled? This is one case where my first reaction is almost certainly identical to the reaction from the right side of the US political spectrum: it's not about Obama, but about Bush. He's not Bush, and they are very, very happy about that.

Don't get me wrong: he's saying some great things, and has made some moves in the right direction. Some. But, as the NYtimes pointed out, the nominations for this year's prize closed just a few weeks after his inauguration.

Granted, pickings were slim this year -- though there's all kinds of humanitarian and civil rights organizations they could still pick from -- but I'm unpleasantly surprised by the shallowness of this choice. Not that Obama couldn't become that kind of President, but he hasn't yet.

On the flip side, the Little Anachronism has been reporting some anti-Obama comments from school -- "likely to be one of our ten worst presidents" -- and this was dramatic balance.

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