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Peace PrizeOctober 09, 2009 I've got mixed feelings about the Nobel Prize committee awarding the peace prize to President Obama. On one hand, I think it's premature. He hasn't done all that much -- not compared to, say, Woodrow Wilson or George C. Marshall, Dag Hammarskjöld or Mikhail Gorbachev, all of whom won the prize for work accomplished in their official capacities. And I like the prize best when it goes to people doing courageous work in non-official capacities, like Martin Luther King Jr., Andrei Sakharov, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, and Desmond Tutu. On the other hand, the election of Barack Obama probably improved the odds for planetary survival more than any other event of the past year. Like it or not, the president of the United States has more influence on the prospects for peace than any other person on the planet. This is not good, but it is reality. I remember how euphoric I was when I awoke the day after election day 2008 and learned that yes indeed, Obama had won. People around the world were likewise euphoric: they could believe that the United States was finally emerging from a very bad dream. Maybe President Obama doesn't really "deserve" the Nobel Peace Prize, but since there's no Nobel Anti-Peace Prize to be given to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, this may be the Nobel committee's way of saying, Bravo, USA, you're finally back on track. Which reinforces one of my evolving convictions, which is that dog training has a lot to say about human behavior. Dog trainers talk about "shaping behavior": encouraging the dog to do what you want the dog to do. One of my current projects is teaching Travvy to shake when I tell him to. When it's raining, he gets wet and shakes the rain off. I click my clicker, say "Shake!," and give him a treat. One of these days I expect to be able to say "Shake!" and have Travvy shake off the rain outside the door instead of inside. The Nobel committee has clicked its clicker to reinforce the behavior of the USA since Barack Obama took the oath of office. And for that I applaud them, with a huge sigh of relief.
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