“[We] thought it would strengthen Obama and it didn’t have this effect,” he told the Associated Press in an interview.

The award so early in his term appeared to take the Obama White House by surprise, and Mr. Lundestad said U.S. officials privately asked if a Nobel Prize-winner had ever skipped the awards ceremony…

“Even many of Obama’s supporters thought that the prize was a mistake,” Mr. Lundestad said. In the book, he expressed regret that the decision had been based in a hope for the future rather than recognition of past accomplishments, and that their expectations for Mr. Obama were not fulfilled.