Former Nobel Official: Obama Prize Failed to Achieve Goals

President Obama receiving his prize in 2009

YNET NEWS: Breaking with official tradition, the former secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize says Obama failed to live up to the panel's expectations.

In a break with Nobel tradition, the former secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize committee says the 2009 award to President Barack Obama failed to live up to the panel's expectations.

Geir Lundestad writes in a book released on Thursday that the committee had expected the prize to deliver a boost to Obama. Instead the award was met with fierce criticism in the US, where many argued Obama had not been president long enough to have an impact worthy of the Nobel.

"Even many of Obama's supporters believed that the prize was a mistake," Lundestad wrote in excerpts of the book read by The Associated Press. "In that sense the committee didn't achieve what it had hoped for." » | AP | Friday, September 19, 2015