Seeking The Nobel Peace Prize
The new President really really wanted to be given—to him, win–the Nobel Peace Prize. He believed it would show the world what a wonderful person he was. Peace, after all, meant a lot more to people than science and that other stuff. He realized it was not a sure thing, given he had just sent troops into his nation’s main cities to stop crime, which was not the usual Nobel Peace Prize-winning approach. Nor was having his Navy execute alleged drug runners instead of just arresting them. Nor were his plans for new military satellites. Nor his renaming the Department of Defence the Department of War.
He tried renaming it the Department of Peace, but no one believed it.
The new President had his advisors read books about previous Peace Prize winners and then summarize them for him. What he did learn was upsetting. A distressing number of winners were not world leaders but regular folks who had done something extraordinary. Worse, it usually took them years! How was that possible? Peace had to be easier than that Science stuff, it was just people not killing each other, for a while.
He decided to do his own research, so he watched movies. He thought Ghandi took forever and started skipping through, pausing at the violence. Curiously, that was the only movie he found starring a Nobel Peace Prize winner, though he was convinced Henry Fonda should have won it for Fail Safe.
Perhaps the committee of whoever they were in Sweden (or was it Norway?) did not understand what it took to be a Peace Prize recipient, so the new President had a guidebook prepared and delivered by his daughter-in-law and her team (that was more discrete than him flying over.) He wanted to give them a public lecture but needed them friendly. No response.
So he tried a newish public slogan, Peace Through Strength. He had posters made up with that line on the bottom, the rest of the poster him wearing a sleeveless armoured vest to show off his muscled arms (photoshop) holding a machine gun. The new President figured if that did not sway the Nobelists, what would?
Turns out what swayed them was a woman in Venezuela in hiding for a year from the military because of her activism.
The new President was very disappointed. He increased trade tariffs to Sweden to 100% and made Volvos and Ingmar Bergman films illegal. However, he did receive some satisfaction when the Nobel Committee created a new award and made him first recipient: Either Clueless Or Corrupt Leader of the Year. (An odd award but the first in what became a yearly honour.)