Reactions to the Nobel award ranged from delight, through surprise, to indignation as Lara Marlowefound out on the streets in Washington
FROM THE chanceries on Embassy Row to the homeless men who congregate in the park, the initial reaction to President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was one of surprise.
“Why?” asked a European ambassador. “What for?” said a retired civil servant as she left the fashionable Fairfax Hotel.
Oliver Kayende, a mathematician who teaches at Howard, the historically black university, and Tom Murphy, an unemployed environmentalist, were locked in a chess match on a stone table beneath the trees in the park at Dupont Circle.
“Wow! That’s incredible!” said Kayende.
“I’m a great supporter of Barack Obama, but it’s kinda hard to see how he’s earned it. He’s commander-in-chief leading two wars, and he wins the Nobel Peace Prize?”
Much as he admires Obama, Kayende said, the US president has not yet attained the stature of his heroes, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi.
“I think he’s getting credit for the withdrawal from Iraq,” Murphy countered.
“He started to earn it before he took office, by assuring the rest of the planet that change was coming. People began to buy into it. In the financial crisis, he stemmed major panic, and that means a lot to other countries. He’s a stabiliser.”
Did the prize mean more to them as African-Americans, I asked the chess-players.
“It means he’s also a symbol of African-American excellence,” said Murphy.
“He’s an incredibly symbolic figure. His getting into the White House was a huge morale booster, especially after Bush,” Kayende added.
“America’s image was going down in flames under Bush,” said Murphy.
Kayende was conscious that “there’s a little schism between his image abroad and the damage the Republicans have done in the healthcare debate. His image abroad is still sky-rocketing.”
Steve Binder, a lawyer from San Diego who’s in Washington to participate on a commission on homelessness and poverty, was reading the New York Times on a park bench.
The Peace Prize was “a nice tip of the hat to his demeanour, persistence and thoughtfulness in pursuing a difficult course of action,” Binder said.
He praised Obama’s “calm resoluteness” which contrasted with the “bravado and muscle-flexing” of the Bush administration.
“The difficulty is learning how to extricate ourselves from the past. You can’t just flip a switch.”
“For too long,” Binder said, “ were shooting ourselves in the foot, by responding without thinking. That Obama is taking time to think is significant, and that is the highest calling for the Nobel Peace Prize. He’s just symbolic of where we need to go.” Richard Hellman, the president of Christians’ Israel Public Action Campaign, was cycling to work. Obama’s Nobel Prize was “an instant answer to prayer,” Hellman said.
On Wednesday night, “I specifically prayed for our president. I was shocked to hear the news this morning; you never know how prayers are answered.”
Hellman has his doubts about Obama – in particular, he believes the president is “not favourable to the rights of Jews to live wherever they please in historic Israel” – an allusion to Obama’s efforts to stop the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Nonetheless, he said, “I congratulate him. It’s an honour for our country. I would hope the Republicans would have the grace to applaud him on this exciting day.”
The middle-aged man I approached on Massachusetts Avenue was, I suspect, a Republican.
He wore beige trousers and a blue and white striped shirt, and carried a briefcase.
“I am absolutely shocked. There is no basis for it whatsoever,” he said angrily when I asked his reaction.
“It’s a mockery of the Nobel system itself.”
Obama has changed nothing, the man said. “I think we got what we deserved.”
Thereupon, he turned and stomped away.
