Opinion

History shows promise, prescience of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize

Looking back to the history of the Nobel Peace Prize, it seems likely that President Obama's selection will come to be viewed as sharing characteristics with many of the previous American laureates. Martin Luther King Jr. was a young, passionate, and charismatic orator whose words drew the attention of the nation and the world, moving forward an already mounting effort to bring about genuine racial equality. Obama, too, has made moving speeches and great strides toward demonstrating the equality of races and the capacity of Americans to recognize injustice at home and in the world.