In a recent Saturday Night Live skit, an actor playing President Obama reassures folks that he isn’t going to impose a totalitarian state. “When you look at my record, it’s very clear what I’ve done so far, and that is nothing,” the actor says. So how did he win the Nobel Peace Prize? It’s more about the past and future than the present.

The Yahoo News site seeks to counter the SNL skit by documenting Obama’s accomplishments. Granted, most reflect a great deal of activity on the part of the Obama Administration. But they also offer a clue as to why Obama became the third sitting American President to pick up the award.

President Theodore Roosevelt won one for his efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War. President Woodrow Wilson picked up another for his efforts on his “14 Points” and the League of Nations a few years later. But Obama is the first to capture the award in his first term of office…or his first year for that matter. So how did he do it, without the ink drying on some peace deal?

Perhaps one reason is that this award makes up for years of omissions and neglect of United States Presidents. Many have brought conflicts to an end (Eisenhower), opened diplomatic relations (Nixon), reduced deadly arms races (Reagan) or concluded amazing peace deals in the Middle East (Carter and Clinton). The biggest oversight may have been President Carter, without whom there would have been no Camp David Accord. Yet while Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin got the awards, Carter was frozen out, in a time when United States Presidents (even liberal ones) received all kinds of international slights (though President Carter received one eventually in 2002).

As the laundry list of small but significant accomplishments trickles in (plans to close the Gitmo Detention facility, remove troops from Iraq, redo the Afghanistan mission to focus upon the political solution, confront global warming, investigate torture, and limit presidential power, as well as reduce nuclear weapon stockpiles), it is tempting to conclude that the Nobel Peace Prize voters did not give the award to President Obama so much as provide a stinging rebuke to his predecessor, George W. Bush ( HYPERLINK “http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_nobel_peace” http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_nobel_peace).

But the former chief executive has his own list of overlooked accomplishments, such as multilateral negotiations with North Korea, attempts to build a “road map” for peace between Israel and Palestine, and nuclear weapon reductions. And while the Iraq and Afghanistan missions may not have gone according to plan, few (if any) think the former was better off with Saddam Hussein or the latter could be improved with the Taliban imposing their religious theocracy upon the country. Perhaps that’s why Bush was nominated for the award a few times, though he never won.

No, this is a lot more about righting past wrongs. But it is also about the future more than the present. As I have noted, President Obama has started a number of initiatives. But as that Saturday Night Live sketch implied, he has few tangible accomplishments. The Norwegian committee may well have given the award as a down payment to ensure he will follow through on those plans, or risk being labeled as one who did not meet promise of a president of peace.

As a side note, President Obama was not the only American to win an award in 2009. Several picked up awards in several scientific fields. At a time when many at home and abroad question this country’s prowess in science, they should be lauded by this nation with equal fervor.