Europe Weighs in on the Obama Peace Prize

Remember the old days when European intellectual elites were exhorting us to vote for Obama? Remember the old days when these same elites were cheering the bright new cosmopolitan president? Remember the old days when we could feel like Sally Field at the Oscars and stand up to say: You like us. You really like us.

Well, not so fast. Now that we have done what the cognoscenti have wanted us to do and elected Barack Obama president of the United States, these same European intellectuals, in the person of the journalistic establishment, seems to be having second thoughts.

Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to someone who had not accomplished anything was a bridge too far for these great thinkers. Now, they seem to be having doubts about Obama. Adulation is giving way to ridicule.

For a compendium of European opinion, I am linking a collection of quotations complied by Soeren Kern. Link here.

Obama's Ignoble Peace Prize

An honor is an honor, except when it is unearned. Then, as James Taranto observed, it subjects you to ridicule. Link here.

When you are awarded a prize you have not earned, the assumption is that the committee has made a mistake... they have mistaken you for someone else.

The rule applies to President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize and explains why it has touched off so much discomfort in his supporters.

New Republic editor Peter Beinart said it well: "I like Barack Obama as much as the next liberal, but this is a farce. He's done nothing to deserve the prize." Link here.

True enough, but since when is the basic issue about a president how much we like him?

Somewhat less liberal columnist Mickey Kaus advised Obama to reject the prize, and notable Obama supporter Christopher Buckley even offered Obama a possible rejection speech. Link here.

More cleverly, Tom Friedman penned an acceptance speech that would turn the tables on the Norwegian politicians who have managed to make the Nobel Peace Prize into a farce. Link here.

In Friedman's speech Obama would tell the assembled Norwegian potentates that the greatest force for peace in the world is the American military. It has liberated Europe from oppression and has been instrumental in keeping the peace in Europe for more than three score years.

Friedman would like to see Obama remind the pretentious and self-important Europeans that they are living in an American military protectorate. Remember the last time America was not around to protect Norway? The country that gave us Quisling has now degraded the Nobel prize.

Of course, he is assuming-- and I hope he is right-- that all of the Europeans who were liberated by World War II were happy to escape the yoke of Naziism. Sometimes I am not so sure.

I would be thrilled to see Obama deliver Friedman's speech. I would be impressed to see Obama deliver Buckley's speech.

But we all know that that is not going to happen. And not just because of diplomatic protocol. It would require a nobility of character that Obama simply does not possess.

As most everyone knows by now, Obama is being honored for his unfortunate habit of apologizing for America. He is being honored for repudiating American military successes.

Friedman's speech could easily have been given by John McCain. Whatever you think of McCain on the issues, he was honorable and noble to a fault. And he was always comfortable defending the glorious tradition of the American military.

Similarly, you might imagine McCain having the requisite humility to deliver the speech Christopher Buckley wrote, especially if he believed that he was being an honor he did not deserve.

But if these pundits believe that Obama could have delivered their speeches, shouldn't we ask them whom they thought they were supporting in the last election?

If Obama's thin resume and his lack of substantive achievements do not qualify him to win the Nobel Peace Prize, then how could these pundits imagine that he was qualified to be President of the United States.

If the Nobel Peace Prize committee voted for Obama based on gauzy visions of hope, the American people made him president for exactly the same reason. If it looks like a farce coming out of the Norwegian parliament, how does it look coming from American ballot boxes?

The fact is, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize all you have to do is give a speech. For that Obama is supremely qualified. To fulfill the duties of the office of the president of the United States you should be able to do much more.

Perhaps these pundits are beginning to feel the first blush of buyer's remorse. With apologies to Hamlet: they project too much, methinks.

As Lee Siegel put it: "Obama warned us long ago, in his first memoir, that part of his success was due to the fact that people projected their own emotions onto him, as though onto a blank screen." Link here.

Of course, this means that Obama is therapist-in chief. The concept of the "blank screen" comes from psychoanalysis. There the mute, invisible analyst is supposed to be a blank screen onto which patients project their fantasies and emotions.

But surely Siegel is fooling himself. No political candidate can ever be a blank screen, a completely unknown quantity. More likely the pundits who are projecting certain characteristics on Obama are trying one last time to rationalize their support for someone whose presidency is nothing like they imagined.

Because if Obama does not turn out to be a blank screen, but comes to resemble the radical leftist his detractors have seen, then these pundits will have some serious 'splaining to do.

Don't Take It Personally

Call me crazy, but I have convinced myself that most therapists have outgrown the habit of helping their patients to get in touch with their feelings.

When you think about it, how much advanced professional training does it really take to respond to your patient's disclosure with: "And how does that make you feel?" And why does anyone need a license to respond empathically with: "I feel your pain."

Unfortunately, this emphasis on personal feelings induces people to take everything personally.

This should not be too surprising. You may not recall but there once was a school of psychoanalysis that insisted on interpreting everything the patient said in terms of the here-and-now of the transference.

You were late for the appointment meant: you were hostile toward your analyst. You spit on the sidewalk meant: you were hostile to your analyst. You could not think of anything to say meant: you loved your analyst.

Hopefully, analysts have gotten beyond that too.

Anyway, the next step beyond, How does it feel?, must be: You shouldn't take it personally.

Thanks to the therapy culture too many people are over-reading incidents and events to make them personally meaningful. If your friend is late for your golf game, the fault does not lie in the traffic jam. He is purposefully insulting you. If your husband brings home a new toy for your son, that can only mean that he does not like you enough to bring home anything for you.

When you take things personally, you introspect a lot and worry about how you feel about how other people feel about you. This does not promote decisiveness.

As John Baldoni argues in a recent article, an executive who takes things personally will have difficulty functioning. He will put: "... what he wants to do ahead of what the company should do." Link here.

This has an interesting resonance for me. When I was studying psychoanalysis my analyst insisted that treatment was about discovering what you really, really wanted. Then all you needed to do was to act according to your desire.

According to Baldoni such an approach fosters hubris and arrogance, even if it is doing so unconsciously.

At the least this means us that psychoanalysis was not designed to make you into an effective executive or manager. Actually, it was not even designed to help you to better manage your personal life.

How do you then avoid taking things personally? Baldoni tells us that the first step is to identify with your executive or managerial position. That means that you should not consider yourself a uniquely independent, autonomous individual, but should see yourself as an executive who is dedicated to what is good for the company and good for your employees.

In other words... put your ego aside. You can even put it in a lock-box.

Next, you should not ask yourself what you want to do, but should introduce an ethical imperative and ask what you should do. What is the right thing to do, given company policy, company goals, company reputation, and company integrity.

The Global Confidence Game

This morning the world was shocked and awed when Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The first reaction was a collective puzzlement. For what?... people around the world asked.

The answer was quickly forthcoming. For injecting hope into international diplomacy and for resetting international relations.

Surely this is a first in human history. Obama was awardedd a prize for what he has not yet achieved. Is this the ultimate vote of confidence? Or simply a desire to promote a collective illusion?

Back down on terra firma the real world of markets has been telling a slightly different story. The dollar has been collapsing; the price of gold has been advancing.

What does this mean? According to the Wall Street Journal it means that the world is voting no-confidence in American economic policies. The world is no longer willing to invest in America.

The withdrawal of confidence has not yet become a complete rout, but the direction is clear enough. Link here.

Perhaps we are learning that winning at the ballot box is not enough. As Robert Rubin famously said, when it comes to economic policy, the bond market has a vote too. Nowadays, we are still waiting for the bond market to cast its ballot. But the foreign exchange markets seem already to have cast theirs.

Is this a simple contradiction? Is there a conflict between the judgment of the markets and the judgment of the cognoscenti, or, whoever decides things like the Nobel Peace Prize?

Perhaps the contradiction is more apparent than real. If the Nobel Peace Prize committee was really so confident in Obama's diplomacy would they not have been willing to wait for its achievements to start rolling in. If they are not really confident in Obama's ability to bring peace in our time, better to award the prize now before evidence to the contrary starts piling up.

The Scarlet Letterman

Surely, Maureen Dowd is right. The dalliances of clowns do not rise to the same level of moral urgency as do those of public officials. Link here.

Yet, the commentariat is currently consuming itself with questions about the sincerity of David Letterman's apology for his several intra-office dalliances. For a collection of these remarks, link here.

I hope that I am not the only one who finds the question strange.

Does anyone really expect that someone who puts on a mask to tell jokes can show the proper expression of shame? When you are always hiding your face, you cannot be expected to worry about whether or not you are losing it.

When it comes to celebrities, there is no way of knowing whether he is ever sincere.

We pay celebrities to embarrass themselves. Beyond how entertaining they are on stage, their off-stage lives are tabloid fodder. That is what makes them celebrities.

After paying celebrities to embarrass themselves, we should not be shocked when they do.

If we are too shocked, we should consider what it means to be an enabler.

Why is it different when we are dealing with a politician? Largely, I would say, because his we are far more likely to emulate public figures.

As basketball legend Charles Barkley so aptly put it: "I am not a role model."

Public figures set a standard for good behavior. Their actions spawn imitators. They do not just show us what is right or wrong, but they show us the path to worldly, not just monetary, success.

Public figures have responsibilities and authority; they have prestige and status in the world. When members of a community want to better themselves, they try to emulate these people.

Normally, people do not emulate celebrities. First, because your life is that much more difficult when you believe that every time you are invited somewhere you are "the entertainment."

Some people become celebrities because they fear anonymity or because they crave financial security. But celebrity success comes always comes at the price of respectability.

With Letterman, as well as with Clinton, the problem was not so much the behavior as it was the exposure.

Dowd was right to that when famous older men get involved with very young women, whether Monica Lewinsky or Stephanie Birkett, there is no real expectation of discretion.

A 22 year old intern is going to blab to all her friends about her sexual encounters with the president of the United States. It is very close to inevitable that she do so.

Stephanie Birkett was older than 22, but her young person's habit of keeping a diary and a photographic record of her affair provoked the crisis.

How to Change Your Life in One Step

Maybe I'm just an incorrigible optimist, but I hope that by now most people have figured out that insight does not cure. Knowing why you get things wrong does not tell you how to get them right.

Once we stop worrying about why we get things wrong, we free up mental space to think about how we can effect real change. On this topic Peter Bregman makes an excellent suggestion. In fact, his idea is so good that it feels simple and obvious. Thus, likely to be ignored. Link here.

Let's imagine that we are no longer awaiting a flash of insight, an epiphany, that will solve all of our problems. Still, we tend to imagine that our problems are so daunting that we need to mount an all-out attack, in several ways from several directions at once.

We crave complexity. We repugn simplicity. If we have agonized over a problem for days, weeks, and years... unable to find a solution... we are not likely to be happy to discover that the solution was simple and direct.

Too many of us have invested our self-esteem in the notion that we are intellectually sophisticated. We traffic in nuance. We happily forgo solutions if we can see ourselves engaged in advanced lucubrations.

Even if we hear about a simple solution, we are likely to reject it. Perhaps it will work for a lesser mortal, but it will do nothing for us. We are too complex. If the simple solution fails that confirms how smart we are.

For those who feel that this notion needs stronger intellectual credentials I would recommend study of Ockham's razor, the principle that says that when you have a simple and complex explanation of a phenomenon, the simpler one is more likely to be closer to the truth. For more detail, see here.

Anyone who has been involved with cognitive therapy knows that when a cognitive therapist hands out a homework assignment no small number of patients will reject the task a beneath them.

As for Peter Bregman,he wanted to lose some weight. After satisfying himself that all diets were variations on the simple theme of restricting caloric intake, he decided to do one and only one thing to lose weight. He decided to cut sugar out of his diet. No more ice cream; no more cookies; no more candies.

He lost eighteen pounds.

In Bregman's view this strategy worked because, by adopting it, he: "...sidestepped millions of complex decisions most diets require-- counting, weighing, choosing, deciding. No phases, no recipes, no thinking."

More than that, his decision saved him from considerable mental static. He did not have to stress about whether he was fulfilling all of the multitude of tasks that each diet required.

Simplicity made the plan easier to follow. Simplicity increased the chances that he would succeed.

Complexity often leads to failure, then to over-eating to soothe one's stressed-out nervous system.

Of course, following one and only one rule requires discipline and focus. You cannot trick yourself into believing that you are following the diet by fulfilling some conditions some of the time.

We talk a lot about focus. We all know that it is a good thing. Yet, it feels as though we are saying that there is a 'focus' switch somewhere in the cerebral cortex, and that you need but turn it on to achieve focus.

Would that it were that easy.

Bregman's way of gaining focus is noteworthy because it is external, not internal. It involves keeping faith with a single decision that addresses a single issue.

If your mind is tasked with multiple activities you are likely to lose focus. It will almost feel like the diet is asking you to do so.

If we apply Bregman's principle more widely, we would see that it is not a good idea to tell people that they can improve their health by going on a diet and developing an exercise routine.

These are both good things. But they should be undertaken one at a time. Perhaps it would be more constructive to make exercise a daily habit before you attack your caloric intake.

Too many changes at once are confusing. They disrupt so many routines that they disorient and even depersonnalize the individual. Make too many changes and you will not recognize yourself. And that is stressful. So stressful that you will likely retreat back into your old habits, the better to discover a Self that feels like an old friend.

Bridge Makes You Smart

Last week the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported the bridge-- the game, not the span-- does not merely protect you against dementia and Alzheimer's, but it also makes you smarter.

Fifth-graders who had been taught how to play bridge tested far better than their peers who had not been taught the game.

It's one thing to love the game, as I do. It's quite another to know that the feeling is mutual.

Link here.