Editor 's note : John Feehery worked for former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other Republicans in Congress . He is president of Feehery Group , a Washington-based advocacy firm that has represented clients that include News Corp. , Ford Motor Co. and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce . He formerly was a government relations executive vice president for the Motion Picture Association of America . John Feehery says he 's proud Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize , but now the president needs to earn it . WASHINGTON ( CNN ) -- Usually , when a president wins the Nobel Peace Prize , it is uniformly seen as a positive development for America and for the world . Both opponents and allies tend to celebrate the fact that an American president actually got recognized by a bunch of Norwegians for something he achieved . But with Barack Obama , who surprisingly picked up his first Nobel Prize on Friday , the reaction was not altogether positive from either the left or the right . You would expect that conservatives would raise questions about the president 's award . Conservatives raise questions about everything the president does . But liberals also joined in . Mickey Kaus of Slate said that the president should say thanks , but no thanks . `` Turn it down ! Politely decline . Say he 's honored but he has n't had the time yet to accomplish what he wants to accomplish . '' Liberal columnist Richard Cohen wrote a mocking column , comparing Obama 's award to a fictional award given to Sarah Palin for promising to `` read a book someday . '' We are all glad that Norway loves Obama , but come on . Let 's get serious . I am reminded of when Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf decided to retire the jersey of longtime White Sox player Harold Baines . It was a little premature for Baines to get his uniform retired when he himself was playing for another team . ( Baines played a couple more years , surely the only instance where a player 's uniform was retired before the player was . ) Awarding Obama the Nobel Peace Prize is similarly premature . In fact , the White House seemed as surprised as anybody about the gesture . I imagine that when Obama first picked up the line , he thought it was a crank call . `` I won what ? '' he must have exclaimed . But it is no joke . It seems that President Obama won his first Nobel Peace Prize , for , well , being President Obama . Just the very idea of a President Obama is enough to make the Nobel Selection Committee swoon . The president said he was humbled by this award . To paraphrase Winston Churchill , he has much to be humble about . When it comes to peace , it is hard to see what notable accomplishments have been achieved thus far in the Obama presidency . That is not a slap at him . Peace takes time . It took John Hume and David Trimble about 30 years of really hard and dangerous work in Northern Ireland before they got a Nobel Peace Prize . And despite all of that hard work , peace and reconciliation is still elusive in that region . Mr. Obama has n't even been able to get a peace deal between Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid , who continue to snipe at each other over the health care public option and Afghanistan . Peace has n't exactly broken out in Iraq , Afghanistan , Pakistan , Israel , or Iran either . Nobel Prizes usually go for some fairly notable accomplishments . Nelson Mandela spent much of his life protesting apartheid and serving a prison sentence . He is a man who deserved a peace prize . Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the Soviet Union to collapse without much of a whimper . That was an accomplishment that deserved a peace prize . But what exactly has President Obama done to deserve such an award ? And if he actually does something in the future , does that mean he gets another one ? Apparently , the voting on the peace prize started shortly after the president was sworn in . Perhaps he is getting the peace prize because of his inaugural address . Yep , a lot of people came to that speech , and peace mostly reigned on that day ( except for those people with tickets to the Inauguration who got stuck in the `` purple tunnel '' in Washington ) . But I do n't think he deserves a peace prize for that . I guess he got the prize because he was elected president and he was n't George Bush . Well , if that is the case , maybe all of those millions of Americans who voted for him should share the prize , because they actually did most of the work . They voted . As an American , I am proud that our president was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize . Now , I , like many others on the right and the left , would like to see him do something to earn it . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John Feehery .
John Kerry : Obama 's Nobel Prize win surprised the right , the left , Obama himself . Hard to see any notable achievements for peace by Obama so far , he says . He says Obama won because he was elected president and was n't George Bush . Obama voters will share the victory , because they elected him , Feehery says .