Opinion The audacity of jokes

But the very fact that this consensus has developed is actually even odder than what caused it. After all,in some ways,awarding the prize to the pre-eminent spokesman for a cause the committee wants to further — even when the spokesman hasn’t yet achieved what he set out to do — isn’t unusual: Al Gore hasn’t fixed global warming,nor has Aung San Suu Kyi freed Burma yet. But this time,the reaction was immediate and near-universal: he hasn’t done enough.

Indeed,nothing was more certain to focus the resentment of those who already felt that Obama was showered with more adulation than he deserved,or to crystallise the disappointment of those who were beginning to feel that he wasn’t living up to the hopes he raised. The reason that the reaction has been so all-encompassing and severe is that the backlash had begun in people’s heads — they just hadn’t known how to express it.

So it was that these five Norwegians — who are no doubt now hiding from puzzled,questioning friends in their holiday cabins in Lapland — have managed to accomplish what his Republican rivals,the Clintons,and all America’s late night television hosts failed to do: turn Barack Obama into a figure of fun. A few months ago,people were worrying he was unmockable. But now,within a few hours,there were dozens of Obama-jokes doing the rounds. Everyone had one.

Here is a sample,from Twitter: “Obama’s peace prize to be delivered by drone aircraft; accidentally ends up in civilian wedding 20 miles away.” “Obama wins prize: Ahmadinejad demands recount.” “I just played Solitaire on my computer; and,dammit,Obama won that too.” “Ironically,Obama’s biggest accomplishment as president so far: winning the Nobel.” “Hey,Hillary! Remember that 3 a.m. call you were so worried about? It happened. Nobel Prize.” “Fortunately,he can reuse his acceptance speech about world peace when he wins Miss World.” Everybody had something to say,whether to point out that the same day — having apparently run out of earthly countries — the US was bombing the moon,or that someone who can kill flies with the single-minded,merciless,robotic purpose Obama famously displayed should have been disqualified.

This might appear to be a re-assertion of normality. After all,there’s no reason why Obama should actually have been above humour. But there is something here that should worry those who care about his agenda anyway: he is in serious danger of losing control of how he’s viewed. Of course,the Obama-as-Messiah thing was inexplicable from the start,especially to the man himself; but now he is in danger of having his most useful assets — his way with words,his reputation as an outsider,his uncanny ability to make people look forward and expect better — turn into easily-discounted negatives,into jokes.

Let nobody think that that hasn’t happened before. When Obama took office,some curmudgeonly commentators — all right,it was I — worried that he showed too many parallels to an earlier transformative liberal,Jimmy Carter. Carter too relied on personal qualities — in his case,a bluff earnestness. When that quality became the butt of nasty humour,he became helpless. And now Obama’s qualities are being mocked; though of course,Carter won the peace prize well after his presidency. Which might just mean that “Obama is becoming Jimmy Carter faster than Jimmy Carter became Jimmy Carter”,as another line doing the rounds has it.

It might well be the case that the very smart people Obama has around him have figured all this out. Certainly,the words that Obama spoke in his first response appear to have been carefully thought out. He said he felt he didn’t believe he “deserved to be in the company” of previous winners,that it was an affirmation of American leadership. All very well. But there was an unusual awkwardness to how he delivered these words; and his leaden banter about how his kids equated the prize to a three-day weekend and the dog’s birthday sounded like it could go,unaltered,into a Saturday Night Live parody of the over-entitled,hyper-lucky first family.

The trouble is that Barack Obama,for all his gifts,is perhaps too gifted. Unlike Tony Blair or Bill Clinton,he never had to learn to moderate his charisma with self-deprecation,because his charisma apparently caused not envy but uncontrollable outbreaks of Hope. And without a little self-deprecation,how is he going to deal with becoming less a figure of awe and more a figure of fun?

It might seem a little unfair that something beyond Obama’s control,the decision of the aforementioned five Norwegians — currently trying to delete their Facebook accounts and ignore emails asking what they were thinking — is causing the Obama-as-promiser-and-little-more bandwagon to gather weight. But the truth is that he asked for it. He raised hopes when he ran which he rationally knew would never be met in office. Those hopes spilled over from the American electorate to the rest of the world. And,in the end,it is for raising these hopes that Obama has been awarded the prize. In a way he did,in fact,earn it.

Carter was the last American president to win. But he wasn’t the last serving American president to win. (The first president to win was noted war-monger Teddy Roosevelt,showing that the Norwegians haven’t been able to get their act together in a hundred years. Teddy,terrified that someone might think he was soft,then overcompensated by massively expanding the size of the US Navy and,post-presidency,attempting to personally denude Africa of big game.) No,that was Woodrow Wilson. Who,in speech after persuasive speech,raised hopes everywhere,including outside America,for a new era in which liberal internationalism would rule. Except he couldn’t push his agenda through,began to be taken less seriously,and left a legacy of failure. Barack Obama,a man with a sense for history,is likely to be more than a little apprehensive.

Obama didn’t ask for this particular prize; but,in asking for a bigger prize,the presidency,he cynically raised expectations that caused this one to be handed to him as well. And he has squandered the unprecedented political capital he came in with. It just took what should have been the crowning moment of a politician’s life to make that sad fact clear.

mihir.sharma@expressindia.com