Friday broke autumnal in Washington and, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, with the disappointing news that the patriarch would not, after all, be donning the tailcoat to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. Instead, the skies over Bethesda were filled with the sound of military aircraft as the US president made his way up to the Walter Reed military hospital for what was termed a “semi-annual” health examination. You go to bed dreaming of glittering prizes and wake up to find a guy in a room with latex gloves.
It’s a moot point as to whether the Nobel Prize, as a concept, is the gold-standard barometer for incomparable feats of human achievement and contribution or just a brilliant marketing wheeze to remind the world of Norway. In the build-up to this year’s prize, the popular thought was that the committee, chosen by the Norwegian parliament, would not be impressed by the American’s constant lobbying for the prize. Such gaucheness would insult their refined sensibilities. But that may say as much about them as it does about Donald Trump.
Handing the Nobel Peace Prize to a figure as belligerent and shameless as Trump, who opened his second term flirting with the idea of invading Greenland and whose divisive style of governance has deepened the ideological chasm within the United States, would be unpalatable to millions around the world.
But it is also true that the scenes of actual joy on the ruined, rubble-strewn streets of Gaza and the celebrations in Tel Aviv among Israelis who wished an end to an appalling and distressing two-year cycle of violence inflicted on Palestine would not have been possible without Trump – and without those same traits of belligerence and shamelessness.
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The cynical take on Trump is that his wish to achieve peace in the Middle East, and his election promises to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on “day one” were spurred by his ambition to “win” the Peace Prize – one of the few gold trinkets that money cannot buy.
But in the millions and millions of words that Trump speaks, he never sounds more convincing or sincere than when he is talking about the visceral, bloody images of death along the front lines of Ukraine. Trump has spoken about the death toll again and again and when he does so, his face assumes a kind of solemnity. He reminds us that he has seen the photographs of slaughtered young Russian and Ukrainian men. When Trump says he hates war, the likelihood is that he means it.
The Nobel committee is not infallible. The rule that prizes must be awarded to a living recipient was the stroke of genius that made the foundation prosper.
Winning the Nobel becomes a race against time between participants across the fields of science, medicine, and literature who, even if they covet the prize, seldom acknowledge that they are even in that competition. Trump never tried to disguise his desire for it.
[ Trump snub shows Nobel committee placed ‘politics over peace’, says White HouseOpens in new window ]
The Nobel crowd managed to choose Bob Dylan for the Literature prize when Philip Roth was still alive, prompting the wonderful aside, delivered from Roth’s Connecticut hideaway: “It’s okay, but next year I hope Peter, Paul and Mary get it.” Even the unwashed phenomenon would have allowed a crooked grin at that.
And if the Nobel committee were sniffy about Trump’s almost naive proclamations that he should be chosen this year, then they were prematurely seduced by the promise of Barack Obama in awarding the Peace Prize to him. Whether Obama lived up to their invitation to serve as a peace president during his eight years in the White House is open to hot debate. On other years, the Nobel committee have just got it wrong. Henry Kissinger frequently tops lists of worst Nobel Peace prize winners. The 1948 committee acquired lasting infamy for awarding the prize to ‘Nobody’ rather than make an exception for the recently assassinated Mahatma Gandhi.
Trump’s health visit on Friday was a reminder that for the undeniable accuracy of Binyamin Netanyahu’s description of the American as a “juggernaut”, he is also a 79-year-old man. Recent obsessive news segments on swollen ankles and a recurring bruise on his hand have reinforced the fact that the Age of Trump cannot last forever.
He remains a riot of contradictions. Flawed and fragile as the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and peace agreement may be, it could not have happened had Kamala Harris won the election. Trump and Trump alone had the force of personality to impose this moment on Netanyahu.
And the moment stands as a tantalising reminder that if Trump could be guided by the better angels of his nature and could summon the generosity of spirit to act as a president for all Americans, then who knows what his legacy could be.
In the meantime, he will thunder on and use the Nobel snub as further proof that the establishment crowd never gives him a fair shout – and it won’t take him long to suggest he should definitely get it next year.
