There’s no doubt of it, Obama is one of the world’s two best orators of the last hundred years, and his performance at the December 10th ceremony was stellar. Was there a teleprompter? I didn’t see him even glance at a set of notes, yet the delivery was flawless. To his credit also is the way his speech addressed head-on an irony of the occasion; here was the world’s greatest warlord, accepting the world’s greatest peace prize. I don’t blame him much for accepting that offer of a lifetime, though I certainly blame the Nobel Committee for offering it in the first place; members must have been powerfully motivated by political rectitude and left-wing solidarity.