He won what?

"It's not April 1, is it?" a White House aide reportedly asked ABC's Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos.

Apparently, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue awoke, as many American households did this morning, to some shocking news: President Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

In an official statement, the president says he was "most surprised and deeply humbled."

Others have expressed similar shock that Obama, in office for less than 10 months, had been awarded the prize. Underlying the shock is the fact that the deadline for filing nominations for the award is Feb. 1 of any given year, meaning the president was nominated after being in office for just 11 days.

"The real question Americans are asking is, 'What has President Obama actually accomplished?'" said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele in a statement. "It is unfortunate that the president's star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights."

A shocked Michael Savage further blasted the Nobel Prize committee for its choice:

"What has [Obama] done? Has he discovered a cure for brain cancer I don't know about?" the talk radio host asked in a Newsweek interview. "We all know what the Nobel Prize committee is ever since Yasser Arafat won. It's a radical leftist front group that hijacked Alfred Nobel's prize."

Fellow radio talker Rush Limbaugh also heaped on criticism, stating that awarding the prize to such an unaccomplished president is a "greater embarrassment" than Obama's recent failed bid to bring the Olympic Games to Chicago.

"This fully exposes the illusion that is Barack Obama," Limbaugh told POLITICO in an e-mail. "And with this 'award' the elites of the world are urging Obama, THE MAN OF PEACE, to not do the surge in Afghanistan, not take action against Iran and its nuclear program and to basically continue his intentions to emasculate the United States."

Limbaugh continued, "They love a weakened, neutered U.S., and this is their way of promoting that concept."

Other reactions, however, have been glowing:

"Obama got the prize not for doing, but for being. Not for making peace, but for exemplifying something new on the world stage – the politics of dignity," wrote Robert Fuller, former president of Oberlin College, on the Huffington Post. "What is dignitarian politics? It is the recognition that people the world over actually want dignity more than they want either liberty or equality. In policy terms, it means ensuring dignity for all – within and among nations."

Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement, "We are pleased that our president has been awarded one of the highest honors for any world leader. Under president Obama's leadership, our nation is beginning to restore its international image as a beacon of peace and justice."

He continued, "CAIR and the American Muslim community stand ready to partner with President Obama in promoting the 'mutual interest and mutual respect' he mentioned in his inaugural address."

WND readers have sent in their share of comments, too.

"To the best of my knowledge, no American President in modern history with no significant foreign policy experience, no major world-shaking legislation to his credit as a junior senator with two years of experience and only a few weeks in office as president before the deadline for nominations ended has won a Nobel Peace Prize," writes WND reader Geoffrey Cox. "Surely this could only be accomplished either by a figure of deity, or by the voting of some incredibly stupid or corrupt Norwegians – I'm going with the latter."

Obama is the third sitting U.S. president to win the award, after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the former in the fifth year of his presidency for negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese war and the latter in the sixth year of his administration, largely for his role in establishing the League of Nations.

Other WND readers have also taken exception to awarding the Nobel Prize to a president with few international accomplishments:

"The Nobel Peace Prize nine months into his term for … what?" asks WND reader Henry Frickel. "That's like giving me, a guy who barely knows how to cut-and-paste and thinks Excel is something you do with that pedal on the right, the Computer World 'Techie of the Year Award.'"
"Obama winning the Nobel, what a joke!" scoffed reader Sherry Perkins. "How do you win a Nobel Prize for peace when you have troops killing people in another country?"
"Has President Obama reduced standing armies? Did he speak out for the peace process when thousands of Iranians were slaughtered in the streets? No," writes reader Louis Frederick. "He managed to convince most the world that America is arrogant, uncaring and not worthy of the superpower status we once held. He stood with hands on hips while Russia rolled over the democratic state of Georgia, and the reward was the removal of a missile shield from Czechoslovakia. He flaps lips while Iran is feverishly working on nuclear weapons to bring 'peace' to the Middle East by destroying the democratic state of Israel. Ludicrous."
R.C. Rochte comments, "So, 'The One' has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (on credit for more surrenders of American sovereignty in the future, no doubt)."

Other reactions from around the country have challenged Obama's merit for the award, not on his resume but on his politics. Judie Brown, president of American Life League, released the following statement:

"Bestowing the Nobel Prize on the most rabid pro-abortion president in history is a direct slap in the face to past recipient, Mother Teresa of Calcutta who said, upon receiving her Nobel Peace Prize: 'the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing – direct murder by the mother herself.'" Brown said. "In awarding the prize to Obama, the Nobel Committee is announcing that abortion is the cornerstone of a hellish 'peace' – the damning silence of 51 million aborted children in the United States alone."

She concluded, "The Nobel Committee has bestowed the 'Peace Prize' on a man dedicated to war in the womb."

Geir Lundestad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, however, defended the choice – even stating the vote was unanimous – on ABC's "Good Morning America":

"President Obama has changed very dramatically international politics," Lundestad said. "We feel he has emphasized multilateral diplomacy, he has addressed international institutions, dialogue negotiations. He has inspired the world with his vision of a world without nuclear arms. He has changed the U.S. policy dramatically. There's a whole list."

As for the president himself, Obama said from the White House Rose Garden, "I do not feel I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures who have been honored by this prize."

"I also know this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women … want to build," Obama said of the prize committee. "I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments but rather an affirmation of American leadership."

He concluded, "I will accept this award as a call to action."

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