That, apparently was the one-word response of Press Secretary Robert Gibbs this morning.

In his first term in his first year in office, President Obama has been awarded The Nobel Peace Prize. I’m clearly not the only one who’s kind of surprised by this; the President himself, by the look of him on the television this morning, appeared caught completely off guard by the announcement; there was  a definite feeling of "why are you giving me this? I haven’t had enough time to actually do anything yet! I’m honored and all, but really?" coming through there.

Of course, though, he can’t not accept it, so he makes his acceptance a "call to action" to work toward accomplishing the ideals of peace and diplomacy, to, I guess, live up to the Nobel Committee’s reason for honoring him, for "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples", etc (full cite here).  Honestly, it’s probably the best way to handle it under the circumstances.

Again, he, like everybody else, seemed completely thrown by the fact that he’s being honored at this point in his career.

Personally, I think it’s probably a little premature; I mean, I’m a big fan of the guy and all, but he’s been President for nine months; he hasn’t had time yet do do anything really worth the honor (not like the other two sitting presidents who’ve won, who negotiated the end of the Russo-Japanese War and fought to establish the League of Nations), except perhaps to change the tone of the international dialogue away from saber rattling and more towards productive discussion between nations.  I think the guy’s really got a shot at accomplishing things that would be worthy, though, I really think it’s too soon, and I suspect the President probably does as well.

That the Nobel folks felt, in his short tenure in office, that President Obama’s international policy is worthy of the honor, says more about how the international community felt about the policies of his predecessor than anything else. I know anecdotally that much of the rest of the world had at least as low an opinion of the Bush administration as I did, but apparently it was bad enough that Obama, by virtue of taking office and saying that things are going to be different from now on, has done enough to warrant the NPP.  Were I in President Obama’s position, I think I’d be a bit conflicted about being honored under these circumstances.

Oh well, it really is a boon internationally, and this should make for some interesting trainwreck viewing as the pundits get hold of it. To quote Wonkette:

O, yes, today will be like 9/11 x War x Twitter for the batshit section of the Internet today.

Happy Friday, everybody; now let’s just hope The moonmen don’t launch a retaliatory strike.

EDIT (10/13): After a little weekend schooling on the history of the Nobel (see here and here, for example), it seems that just as often as not, the Prize is given as an encouragement to press on with efforts, rather than as recognition of accomplishment. In that spirit, the nomination makes a bit more sense, particularly given the change in diplomatic tone between the Obama and Bush presidencies. Still, though, I’m sure I’m not the only one to whom this feels slightly presumtive, even if I agree with the sentiment the nominating committee was probably going with.