The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Barack Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said in its citation. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

At best, this seems premature to me. He’s only been in office nine months, and he has no diplomatic accomplishments (as even the New York Times acknowledges), only rhetoric. Has the Nobel Peace Prize become nothing more than a global popularity contest?