Obama and Nobel: Go big or stay small?
I keep seeing headlines saying the Nobel Peace Prize complicates things for the Obama White House. How? Why? Total nonsense!
This allows the president to do what he did in the campaign: stay big and large. When he stumbled as a candidate, it was because he sweated the small stuff. But when he focused on the greater good, that was when he connected with the American people. He touched them where they had never been touched.
I don’t understand a strategy to minimize it. Axelrod called this “unchartered waters.” Huh? You play the hand dealt you.
Listening to the president’s Rose Garden speech and hearing him say it’s all about the American people reinforces the point of why we engage our adversaries. This is no time to run away from what made him special and unique. It’s what you run to.
When the president calls on Americans – and the world – to accept the leader in each one of us, it is a higher calling. That leadership may mean revitalizing your community; it might mean fighting for education; it might mean caring for AIDS orphans; it might mean fighting landmines in war-torn countries.
The message the White House should be sending is that America has reached a point where she can use it’s power in a different way. This is about restoring America’s moral leadership.
The opposition blasts the president for apologizing for America’s past transgressions. Where I come from we call that maturity in admitting mistakes.
This is no time to run from the honor. It’s time to represent it and call on all Americans to put aside our differences and pledge to work for the good of every man, woman and child.
When President Obama is reduced to playing small ball, he becomes a creature of the Beltway and doesn’t move Americans and the world to act.
Yet when he embraces the moment, he strikes a different chord in those who believe that America can return to the day of strong, effective moral leadership. The world once respected us for this and our idealism, that is until we got lost in ideology.
The strength of Dr. King’s work was based on his call to adhering to moral leadership. That is where America needs to be, and engagement and dialogue in pursuit of peace isn’t just practical, it’s vital.
As for the $1.4 million in prize money, don’t just dump it on one charity. Seek out community organizers who are being leaders just where they are. Provide them with $25,000 to $50,000 grants and call on the nation to help those who are making a difference from the bottom up.
