In Search of a Prize-Winner

I know I'm late to the party with this one, but Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize this morning. Thousands of columns and posts have already been written detailing why Obama does or does not deserve this honor, or how it portends the End Times.

My question is, rather, why not? The President has done much in his first months in office to repair the White House's relationships with governments around the world, and has, through the art of speech-making and state-craft, done perhaps even more to improve public perception of the United States as a whole world-wide. He has pushed aggressively for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, begun the process of closing down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, soundly rejected Bush Administration's policies that institutionalized torture and systematic violation of civil liberties, and has begun the process of ending a bloody, unjust war in Iraq.

Perhaps it still seems intuitively premature to award a sitting President the prize only months into his first term, but I fail to see who would have been a 'better' choice this year. Not only is Obama an internationally recognized symbol for the end of a thankfully brief period of 21st century neo-conservative imperialism, he is actively working to rectify the damage done over the last eight years.