2009 Nobel Peace Prize a disservice and a potential liability." An editorial in "The Washington Post" began, "It's an odd Nobel Peace Prize that almost makes you embarrassed for the honoree", and compared the Nobel Committee's statement that Obama had "created a new climate in international politics" to a recent satirical skit on television. A "Los Angeles Times" editorial said the committee "didn't just embarrass Obama, it diminished the credibility of the prize itself". Thomas L. Friedman of "The New York Times" wrote, "It dismays me that the most important prize in the world has been devalued in this way". Much of the commentary
Nobel Prize Geir Lundestad, Secretary of Norwegian Nobel Committee in 2006, said, "The greatest omission in our 106 year history is undoubtedly that Mahatma Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace prize. Gandhi could do without the Nobel Peace prize. Whether Nobel committee can do without Gandhi is the question". In 1948, the year of Gandhi's death, the Nobel Committee declined to award a prize on the grounds that "there was no suitable living candidate" that year. Later, when the 14th Dalai Lama was awarded the Peace Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was "in part a tribute