Today’s Sunday News shows focused on Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech given this week. Secondary topics included the economy, health care, and the global warming conference in Copenhagen.

Obama’s acceptance speech for his Nobel Peace Prize was a bit of a finger in the eye of the Nobel committee. Obama, instead of a humble plea for world peace, sort of threw down the gauntlet and said that if the U.S. thought that military force needed to be used, that this ok in the scheme of things. I don’t think it was what the Nobel committee wanted to hear.

And the praise from arch conservatives such as Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan, Sarah Palin, and Charles Krauthamer, for the speech, certainly tells me that Obama has gotten off course. It truly is amazing to me that the guy who owes his presidency to being the most anti-war is now out touting the benefits of war. What a world in which we live.

Obama is taking a huge chance by escalating in Afghanistan. One would think that he would have learned the lessons of history. But then again, and one can never know the pressures that a president is under unless you were actually there, did he really have a choice?

Obama was pushed by his political opponents, the press, and top military brass, into a corner. That corner was that he either gave the generals what they wanted or he would be stuck with the blame if things went bad. If Obama was branded as “losing” the Afghan war as the Taliban took over, and even, heaven forbid, it was followed by another large terrorist attack in the U.S., which was also blamed on Obama, he could kiss goodbye a second term. I think Obama wants a second term.

He just cannot risk being blamed for any failure that might occur in Afghanistan. So he chose the path of least resistance - to share the blame with his generals. I am very skeptical that this additional militarism is going to work. We’ll see.

I have to comment on the McLaughlin Group. I continue to be amazed that McLaughlin himself seems to be pushing Sarah Palin. It is unbecoming for someone who has been around as long as McLaughlin. But Pat Buchanan and Monica Crowley were unbelievable in the comments they made about “global warming.” They showed themselves to be total ideologues - party hacks - when it comes to this issue. I can’t wait for them to publish the transcript. Then those that didn’t see or hear can tell for themselves just how radical these folks can be.

I found an interview with Marie Bartiromo and a wealthy investor named, I believe, Jim Rogers, to be one of the more interesting interviews of the day. He said that the economy is still in bad shape, that more bad is yet to come, and the place to put your money is in commodities. Greenspan, a guest on Meet the Press, said that interest rates were going to be coming up sometime in the future. All in all, not great news on the economy. Actually, I think higher interest rates would be better for the economy, but when you are printing money, that isn’t what you want. And if you are setting interest rates and printing money both, the incentives to raise interest rates, even if it might benefit a lot of people, isn’t very great.

One has to admit that Obama has un uncanny sense of reaching mainstreet America. It’s sort of like the least common denominator, but really, that is unbecoming for someone as intelligent as Obama. He should be leading. But, he is very very cautious in his political standing. Maybe he feels that once it slips away, it is gone forever. But reaching down isn’t what leaders do. We’ll see as time progresses if this strategy serves him well.