As funny as all the goofs today are, I feel some sympathy for him insofar as he didn’t campaign for this the way he did for the Olympics. Watching him get stuffed in the first round in Copenhagen was amusing because he strutted in there trying to “Zeus” the IOC into giving him the games. Hubris and nemesis. The Nobel is more like a flaming bag of sh*t left on his doorstep: He didn’t ask for it but now he has to deal with it, and no matter what he does he ends up a bit soiled. The last thing the White House wants is an excuse for voters to ponder the thinness of The One’s record, yet that’s precisely what this achieves — on a global scale, vastly beyond the reach of the SNL skit that the media’s been chirping about and even McCain’s viral “celebrity” campaign ad last summer. Like Ace said, Obama’s failure to produce meaningful Change is the elephant in the room and “the Nobel Prize committee has painted that elephant in hot-pink and gold-flake and thrown a ten thousand watt spotlight on it.”

CBS actually takes it as far as this:

Today’s Nobel Peace Prize announcement raises the question: Is a negative caricature of President Obama now fully developed?

One thing that eluded Mr. Obama during his presidential campaign was that he was never successfully lampooned by the Republican Party…

Well, today’s announcement – while totally out of the president’s control – finally may have handed his critics their own “Mission Accomplished” moment.

Like the Democrats did after President Bush prematurely declared the Iraq war “accomplished” on that aircraft carrier in 2003, the right is already using the Nobel prize as an opportunity to hammer Mr. Obama for not having accomplished what he’s being honored for.

My question: How much added pressure does this put on Obama to get something done soon, and does that something have to be in the context of international relations or will passing health care suffice? He’d better hope it’s the latter because he’s going to get jack from negotiations with Iran and Palestine. Perhaps a treaty of some sort with our new Taliban non-enemies will secure his peacemaking legacy?