As the newest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, President Barack Obama has a task no other winner has faced: figuring out how to respond gracefully to an enormous honor given embarrassingly prematurely. ...

The adulation with which much of the world has greeted the new president has fueled those critics who paint him as vain and insubstantial. Now, he has to explain why he, who has spoken eloquently of international cooperation and hope for the future but has had little time to achieve any concrete improvements, has won the world’s most prestigious accolade ahead of others who have toiled for years, risking their lives to bring peace, justice and freedom to the world’s bleakest corners. ...

Millions of Americans share the Nobel committee’s high hopes that Obama’s collaborative approach to the world will repair the nation’s international standing and lead to greater cooperation and improvement. But it’s a work in progress — barely.

The Nobel committee has used the prize to show political support — or as some see it, as moral pressure to constrain or direct the president’s exercise of U.S. power — rather than to honor meaningful achievement. That can’t help but undermine the credibility of the prize.