Even before President Donald Trump announced a diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and
Bahrain on Friday, he had been nominated twice this past week alone for the Nobel Peace Price.
The nominations, each from a right-wing Scandinavian politician, were met around the world with
a mixture of amusement and dismissal: Much like submitting art or writing for a prize, such a
designation doesn't mean much in itself.
But the White House rejoiced all the same. After the first nomination Wednesday, the White House
press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, opened her briefing that day by calling it "a hard-earned and
well-deserved honor for this president."
Given Trump's worldwide reputation as a dangerous disrupter, he seems exceedingly unlikely to join
a cast of luminaries that includes Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev. But all of the talk of
peace does spotlight what in recent weeks has become a core foreign policy message for the president
in the homestretch of the November election.
Jeremy Rosner, a longtime Democratic pollster with a background in national security, said he was
not losing sleep over the prospect of an October surprise emerging from Oslo. Nor did he concede
any worry that Trump's talk of peace might win over swing voters.
There are also substantive caveats to Trump's fanfare. For all of the White House's talk of
historic Middle East peace deals, Israel was not in an actual state of conflict with the UAE or
Bahrain. The countries are merely consecrating a quiet alliance that had been developing for years,
noted Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, who said that
Trump was like "the rooster taking credit for the dawn."