Peace Prize in a Crackerjack box?

Ross Douthat on the mistake made by five smitten Norwegians and one American president:

"People have argued that you can’t turn down a Nobel. Please. Of course you can. Obama is a gifted rhetorician with world-class speechwriters. All he would have needed was a simple, graceful statement emphasizing the impossibility of accepting such an honor during his first year in office, with America’s armed forces still deep in two unfinished wars.

Would the world have been offended? Well, to start with, the prize isn’t given out by an imaginary “world community.” It’s voted on and handed out by a committee of five obscure Norwegians. So turning it down would have been a slap in the face, yes, to Thorbjorn Jagland, Kaci Kullmann Five, Sissel Marie Ronbeck, Inger-Marie Ytterhorn and Agot Valle. But it wouldn’t have been a slap in the face to the Europeans or the Africans, to Moscow or Beijing, or to any other population or great power that an American president should fret about offending."

UPDATE: Eugene Robinson argues for the other side. The heart of his argument:

"Obama has shifted U.S. foreign policy away from George W. Bush's cowboy ethos toward a multilateral approach. He envisions, and has begun to implement, a different kind of U.S. leadership that I believe is more likely to succeed in an interconnected, multipolar world. That this shift is being noticed and recognized is to Obama's credit -- and to our country's."

Note that Robinson's argument depends on making the following assumptions, all of which are questionable: 1. That George W. Bush had a "cowboy ethos" 2. That a "cowboy ethos" is bad 3. That unalloyed multilateralism is good 4. That all it takes to "shift" U.S. foreign policy is a mistranslated reset button and some speechifying.

I think Douthat makes a better case than Robinson. Besides which, it's time to do laundry.