text: We can't see it. Not like they do. We are too close. We are too distracted and too caught up in our internal struggles, some petty and some not so petty.
  The world has no doubt that Barack Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Americans are not so sure.
  Didn't he take office less than a year ago?
  Europeans see a different reality. They see it clearly.
  Here's an analogy. You work for a car company. Let's call it Big Motors. You are lower-level management. One of the grunts. The top management is arrogant, ill-informed, self-centered, rigid, and incapable of change.
  The No. 1 guy is the worst of all: Oblivious and impenetrable. The company is headed for the rocks. Everyone can see it but the leader and his team.
  Then one day there is a coup. The board of directors, tired of seeing money fly out the window, fires the management team and hires a new president. Maybe he is more like Lee Iacocca. Maybe he is more like Bill Gates. But he listens, he learns, he has a plan, and he can lead.
  On Day One he says: "We are reevaluating our whole product line. We are examining our principles. We have to make a fundamental change."
  Now the board, and the comptroller, and many people who know just how big a mess exists and how long it will take to clean it up, and know well that there will be false starts and sudden stops, may see this new leader as something less than superhuman. He's just a man.
  But one man can make a big difference. If he is the right man. And the time is right. To the grunts, and perhaps to buyers of the product, he is Moses, he is Edison, he is Johnny Unitas. For something is very clear: It is a new day.
  That first day was the day. It was the change day. Life didn't become perfect that day, but it changed.
  One man turned the ship.
  Many in the United States look at Barack Obama and think: He didn't get the stimulus quite right; he is still too soft on the banks; there are no good options in Afghanistan, and those are our sons and daughters dying in that God-awful desert; and why was getting the Olympics in Chicago so important, anyway?
  The rest of the world sees a changed America. Barack Obama's first day in office was change day -- the day.
  America was no longer run by bullies.
  Dwight Eisenhower faced an intractable war in Korea. He said, "I will go to Korea."
  Obama faced a world that no longer believed in America. The United States was alienated and alone. He made us part of the world again. He put us back in history. It began on Day One.
  A few days ago, our president went to the United Nations and personally buttonholed world leaders to get them to sign on to a nuclear nonproliferation process. That was huge. The previous U.S. position was that our nation could keep its nukes. No other nation could. Our president said we too will build down. The U.S. press slept. But the world noticed this.
  He went to Cairo and opened a dialogue with Islam. He made clear that he would defend our nation, but that not all of Islam is against us. We know this and wish to acknowledge it, he said. Let civilized peoples unite.
  In Cairo, grown men wept.
  Respect from America.
  He opened the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for the first time in a decade.
  He opened talks with Iran. He listened to the Russians. He breathed life into NATO. One man. He turned the ship.
  We are caught up in the health insurance debate. It's messy, and complex, and sometimes ugly. Whatever bill passes, it will not solve all our problems.
  The Nobel Prize has been given to Barack Obama in recognition that he intends to lead us in the world, not away from it. The world respects us when we honor international law, listen, and seek to build alliances.
  Mohamed Elbaradei, the director-general of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, who received the prize in 2005, said: "I cannot think of anyone today more deserving of this honor. In less than a year in office, he has transformed the way we look at ourselves and the world we live in and rekindled hope for a world at peace with itself."
  That is the reality the world sees clearly, and that we cannot quite see, because we are too close and too caught up. But it is reality.