Dave Gordon writes to ask…
Given your comments about Trump and the Nobel Prize, I wonder if you would like to comment on the awarding of that prize to Barack Obama two months after he became president the first time. Since that means he was nominated at least six months before he was elected, it seems…rather presumptious, certainly premature. I'm no fan of Trump, etc etc, but as I've said elsewhere, he was elected by the same system that gave America Abraham Lincoln and J.F.K., and (insert name of any other president you think was a good one). A lot of people, probably in what you guys call the "flyover states" (that name is probably another symptom of the problem) think Trump is at least doing what he promised before the election.
Abraham Lincoln and J.F.K. were elected due to Russian meddling and a ginned-up phony scandal about their opponents' e-mails? Wow. You learn something new every day.
I don't think much of any awards, especially those where the process — who votes, how they vote, what criteria is applied — is generally unknown. The Nobel Prize certainly qualifies for my indifference. Do you know how it's determined? I sure don't, though I do get that if a lot of people say you and I deserve it, we're misunderstanding or misrepresenting the actual nominating process if we then go around and say we were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
So my answer is that I don't really think much of Obama's prize or any selection. It's an award, it's well-known and there's some money attached. That seems to be enough for some people (especially when they win it) to treat it as a great honor. But his was, like you said, certainly premature. If he ever deserved one, he probably didn't deserve it then.
And hey, before we wrap this up, let's discuss two other things, one being your idea that "you guys" refer to "flyover states." I don't know who "you guys" are but I've never used that term. This blog has 25,416 posts in it and that phrase never turned up in any of them. If you're talking about people in Hollywood or Los Angeles thinking that way, I've never heard that term used by anyone around me. With the whole world connected by the Internet these days, I can't imagine why anyone would think that way.
As for Trump doing what he promised before the election…well, he promised a great universal health care system that would cover more people than Obamacare did and be much cheaper. We haven't seen a trace of that. He promised a new prescription benefits plan that would save $300 billion a year and drastically lower the cost of medicine. The plan he's supposed to announce today does almost none of that. He promised to invest more money in U.S. infrastructure than Hillary Clinton was proposing and the White House has just announced he's not going to do any such thing.
He promised to renegotiate NAFTA into a much better deal for the U.S. That was supposed to be one of his highest priorities and that hasn't happened. He promised to "drain the swamp" of lobbyists and influence peddlers and then he recruited from their ranks for his cabinet and administration. He promised tax reform that would hurt people like him and he promised a wall which ain't being built and today's news says that he's been screaming at his staff about their inability to close borders as much as he promised. I think he even promised not to play a lot of golf, didn't he?
The same cynicism I have for awards extends to my not expecting any elected official to make good on all or most of their campaign promises. I think though that Trump has had a lower score than most and a profound belief in his ability to fast-talk his way around admitting when he's reneged or reversed. I'll start changing my mind about him when we see even a semi-workable proposal for that health plan where "everybody's going to be taken care of, much better than they're taken care of now and the government's going to pay for it."