True enough. He did, after all, downgrade missile defense in eastern Europe in order to build a peace consensus with Russia on Iranian nukes.

How’s that working out?

“We simply disagree that he has done nothing,” committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told the AP on Tuesday. “He got the prize for what he has done.”

Jagland singled out Obama’s efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe.

“All these things have contributed to—I wouldn’t say a safer world—but a world with less tension,” Jagland said by phone from the French city of Strasbourg, where he was attending meetings in his other role as secretary-general of the Council of Europe.

That’s as candid a statement as you’re ever likely to see from an international diplomat. In fact, it reminds me of ElBaradei (a Nobel laureate himself) and his approach to Iran: Peace isn’t measured by actual security gains but merely by how well “tensions” have been papered over. No wonder The One got the award. Who’s better at getting up on stage and assuring the world that we’re all on the same team, even though we’re very much not? As Bret Stephens and Rich Lowry said, in hindsight he was the perfect pick. They might as well give him next year’s award now too. Exit quotation from Jeffrey Lord, daring to dream big:

It’s time to end the monopoly of the Nobel Peace Prize, the prize that is in fact historically and relentlessly dedicated in the modern era to rewarding the fatuous leftist ideas and false values of leftist global diplomacy. A philosophy that not only did not bring peace to the world — but never will. Not when tried by Woodrow Wilson, Austen Chamberlain, Frank Kellogg, Aristide Briand, Nicholas Murray Butler and Arthur Henderson and others from 1919 to 1939. Or Jimmy Carter in 2002, Al Gore in 2007, and now Barack Obama in 2009.

It’s time to award real prestige to those who achieve real peace.

It’s time for the Reagan Prize.

Update: A fair point in The One’s defense from the comments. The beer summit was epic.