Obama's Nobel Peace Prize A Mixed Blessing At Home

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Obama's Scandinavian travel: Take two

by Mark Silva

With the winning of a Nobel Prize for Peace, President Barack Obama will be making a return trip to Scandinavia.

The president plans to collect his award in person in Oslo, the White House said today -- though it's less certain if he will attend the dinner in Stockholm.

The result of Obama's last trip, to Copenhagen, was less celebratory: The International Olympic Committee meeting there rejected Chiago's bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, a pitch that the president and First Lady Michelle Obama made in person.

Now that Obama is "a man of peace,'' one reporter asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs today -- invoking words that radio's Rush Limbaugh had used rather derisively -- how will he "deal with the fact" that he's now a Nobel Peace Prize winner and thinking of sending more troops to Afghanistan?

"There are actions of necessity that will be and are taken by this country to protect our homeland,'' Gibbs said today, another day of meetings for Obama's war advisers following the president's speech about the prize in the Rose Garden.

"The discussion that will be had today is about a very dangerous region in the world, and there are steps that have to be taken to ensure that we are not attacked and that our allies are not attacked,'' Gibbs said. "Those are steps, again, the president mentioned quite clearly in his speech. Those are steps that he'll make not lightly as commander-in-chief, but he will work every day to protect our homeland.''

A decision on the Afghan deployment may still be "several weeks away,'' Gibbs noted today. That could place it much closer to that presidential trip to Oslo.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded at a ceremony in Oslo City Hall (a past ceremony pictured above), in Norway, on Dec. 10, the date on which Alfred Nobel, creator the prize, died.

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize A Mixed Blessing At Home

The Nobel Committee recognized President Obama for his efforts to change the tenor abroad. But at home, Obama's win is unlikely to either move or hamper his agenda.