Nobel chief regrets Obama peace prize | The Compost Bin | Forums

well, duhhhhh

The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama in 2009 failed to live up to expectations, the committee's ex-secretary has said.

In his memoir, Secretary of Peace, Geir Lundestad said the committee expected the prize to be a boost to Obama.

Instead, the decision was met with criticism in the US. Many argued he had not had any impact worthy of the award.

Obama himself said he was surprised and even some of his supporters thought it a mistake, Lundestad said.

The US president apparently considered not going to pick up the award in Norway's capital, Oslo, with his staff enquiring whether other winners had skipped the ceremony.

But they found that this has happened only on rare occasions, such as when dissidents were held back by their governments.

"In the White House they quickly realised that they needed to travel to Oslo," Lundestad wrote.

Lundestad served as the committee's influential, but non-voting, secretary from 1990 to 2015.

He has broken with the tradition of the secretive committee, whose members rarely discuss proceedings.

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