11 October—Had she not died in 1962, today would be Eleanor Roosevelt’s 141^st birthday. Although Mrs. Roosevelt was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize and clearly deserved it, it was never awarded to her. While Nobel Peace Prize laureates generally do deserve the signal honor and prestige, some, who will go nameless (like Albert Gore Jr. and Barack Obama), clearly do not.

Among others who do not deserve to be Nobel Peace Prize laureates are Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin. Happily, they aren’t; they weren’t awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But, believe it or not, all four dictators were actually nominated.

Donald Trump also was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. His nominators include the usual lackeys, admirers, and hangers-on in the United States and the usual dictators, admirers, and hangers-on outside the United States. To no one’s surprise, Trump himself had campaigned shamelessly and shamefully for what’s regarded as the biggest prize in diplomacy. And he’ll continue campaigning: “I know this, that nobody in history has solved eight wars in a period of nine months. And I’ve stopped eight wars. So that’s never happened before.”

Is that Trump or is that Trump? Truth be told, although as usual he gives himself far too much credit, his boast isn’t totally idle. He has in fact helped out with a few peace deals. Naturally he’s done it through his notorious schoolyard bullying, but he’s done it. And when you get down to it, peace wouldn’t exist were it not for the alternative—the threat—of war.

Anyway, to Donald Trump’s chagrin, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate is María Corina Machado, a right-wing, liberal [sic] anti-authoritarian Venezuelan democracy activist currently in hiding from her country’s dictator. But she dedicated her prize not only to “the suffering people of Venezuela,” but also “to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause.” Among her nominators for the prize last year, by the way, were U.S. lawmakers, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was a senator at the time. Have they any regrets?

Trump boasted to the press that Sra. Machado had told him she was accepting the Nobel “in honor of you because you really deserved it.” Who knows? Who cares? In all events, his communications flunky Steven Cheung predictably protested “the Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.” And Trump’s envoy-flunky for Venezuela (and interim Kennedy Center flunky-president) Richard Grenell insisted the “Nobel Prize died years ago.”

Wait till next year?