Barack Obama ‘not boosted’ by Nobel Prize award as expected

The decision to award US President Barack Obama with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 has failed to live up to expectations, a book due out in Norway on Thursday reveals.

Geir Lundestad writes in his memoir that the committee had expected the prize to deliver a boost to Mr Obama but was instead met with fierce criticism in the U.S. , where many argued the president had not been in his position long enough to have an impact worthy of the award.

And that makes sense.

It was nonetheless getting lots of publicity this week, not just for Lundestad’s characterizations of committee members over the years but also for its revelations about how the Nobel system operates.

According to Lundestad’s account, the White House even tried to find a way for Obama to avoid the ceremony, though the Nobel Committee warned it that recipients of the prize were only allowed to avoid the ceremony in exceptional circumstances.

Lundestad served as the Committee’s secretary from 1990-2015.

Lundestad’s book gave a rare inside look into the inner workings of the Nobel committee, whose decision-making process has always been shrouded in secrecy.

It was aspirational-since the president had been in office only 9 months.

Obama may be one of the most controversial recent winners of the Nobel peace prize, but he is far from the first. “In broad strokes, the answer was no”.

“No Nobel Peace Prize ever elicited more attention than the 2009 prize to Barack Obama”, Lundestad wrote.

Lundestad also flatly rejected commentators’ claims that he was unduly harsh in his evaluation of Thorbjørn Jagland as the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s former chairman.

The Nobel Peace Prize, an award that was established in 1901 to recognize outstanding achievement on behalf of mankind, a century later seems to have morphed into Norway’s magic geopolitical wand, wielded to encourage political action, rather than reward accomplishment.

Lundestad’s memoir contained several other noteworthy passages.

“It was made very clear that they meant to watch until the end”, he said.

Jagland declined to comment, said Daniel Holtgen, his spokesman at the Council of Europe.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee particularly cited Obama for his efforts towards nuclear non-proliferation and for promoting a “new climate” in worldwide relations.