Another meme being advanced today on behalf of Barack Obama‘s Peace Prize is that it’s perfectly normal for the prize to be awarded before recipients actually succeed in the causes they are rewarded for.

Here’s Robert Naiman in The Huffington Post:

Some initial commentary has called the award unprecedented and wondered why the committee would give President Obama the award when he “hasn’t done anything yet.”

But anyone who thinks this award is unprecedented hasn’t been paying attention.

The Nobel Committee gave South African Bishop Desmond Tutu the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his leadership of efforts to abolish apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid wasn’t fully abolished in South Africa until 1994. The committee could have waited until after apartheid was abolished to say, “Well done!” But the point of the award was to help bring down apartheid by strengthening Bishop Tutu’s efforts. In particular, everyone knew that it was going to be much harder for the apartheid regime to crack down on Tutu after the Nobel Committee wrapped him in its protective cloak of world praise.

That’s what the Nobel Committee is trying to do for Obama now. It’s giving an award to encourage the change in world relations that Obama has promised…

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know Desmond Tutu, and Desmond Tutu isn’t a friend of mine. But it’s still plain to see that Barack Obama is no Desmond Tutu.

Yes, apartheid wasn’t fully abolished in South Africa by 1984. But by that time, Desmond Tutu had already been fighting apartheid in South Africa for years. Neither Tutu, nor anyone else to whom the Peace Prize was awarded as a way of encouraging their cause, received the award at the very beginning of their fight.

And that’s the whole point. To point out that people have, in the past, been awarded the prize before their struggles were successfully completed actually only underlines how unprecedented it is to award the prize at a purely aspirational stage.

Funny how no one seems to have been able to come up with a cogent, convincing argument for how or why Obama actually deserves the prize at this stage.

That being said, it’s hard to know what to make of this:

“Some people say, and I understand it, isn’t it premature? Too early?” (Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland) said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Well, I’d say then that it could be too late to respond three years from now. It is now that we have the opportunity to respond — all of us.”

The Associated Press didn’t see fit to provide any context for that quote. Too bad. Because as I wrack my brains, I’m only able to come up with two possible interpretations. He could be saying: “Hey, three years from now the dude may have failed totally.” Or he might mean: “Who knows if the dude will even be alive three years from now?”