A goad, not a reward.

Byline: The Register-Guard

There must have been a moment in the White House Friday morning when President Obama and his advisers discussed declining the Nobel Peace Prize. The president could have walked into the Rose Garden and told the world that while he was deeply honored by the Nobel Committee's selection, he could not accept a prize he has not yet earned, and that he hoped his achievements would merit the committee's consideration at some future date. That would have put an end to the chatter about Obama's narcissism, at least for a while.

But Obama will accept the prize, perhaps because he paid attention to the Nobel Committee's explanation of why it was awarded. The committee was clear in stating that Obama was being recognized for the hopes he has stirred - and, implicitly, not for the wars he has ended or the treaties he has negotiated. It is an aspirational prize, one given to encourage the president to continue in the directions he has charted.

Aspirational prizes have been awarded before. If the Nobel Committee had waited for Mideast peace, Shimon Perez, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat would not have been awarded the Nobel in 1994. In that case the Nobel Prize was given to reward Israeli and Palestinian leaders' willingness to pursue the possibility of peace. Before peace can come, the climate for its arrival must be created - and that's the work for which Obama will be honored.

For a president not quite nine months into his first term, such an honor may seem premature. Indeed, Obama's nomination came just weeks after his inauguration - before he'd had time to figure out how to use the phones, much less earn a place in history as a peacemaker. But even before the president began to face the messy compromises of governance, he had clearly shifted the tone and tenor of American leadership in the world.

"He created a new international climate," the Nobel Committee said. "Only rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

That can be read as a rebuke to George W. Bush - Bush's defenders certainly take it as such. Less parochially, however, it reflects the degree to which Obama has captured the world's imagination, and affirmed faith in the United States' fidelity to its ideals. By the time Obama was nominated for the peace prize he had already renounced torture as an instrument of American policy, set in motion multilateral diplomatic initiatives and spoken in respectful terms of world opinion. The peace prize is an echo of the global sign of relief that followed Obama's election.

"To be honest," Obama said Friday, "I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformational figures who have been honored by this prize." Obama is right - he doesn't deserve to stand beside Nelson Mandela, Lech Walesa, Teddy Roosevelt, Desmond Tutu, Andrei Sakharov, Norman Borlaug and many other previous laureates. But with its selection the Nobel Committee, in recognition of Obama's promise, is attempting to push him in that direction.