It's a fair question whether President Barack Obama really deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It's just that, in the scheme of things, I don't think it's a very interesting question.

I'm still digesting all of this, of course. Talk about a weekend surprise. But if we go by the usual Nobel standards, I can't see, at the moment, how Obama even comes close to deserving the laurels, which generally reward either a life commitment to changing the world (think Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela) or a huge accomplishment in the cause of peace (think Mikhail Gorbachev, pivotal in ending the Cold War, or Woodrow Wilson, instrumental in the Treaty of Versailles). Not that every Nobel Peace Prize winner has that kind of global veneration; recent recipients include former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and Mohamed Elbaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency. And anyway, I do think Obama has the potential for greatness in leadership -- if someday soon he would gird his loins to lead his party and his wobbly nation.

No doubt, there is plenty of sound and fury in the "is he worthy?" Nobel debate that is now rattling our American windows. Head Republican buffoon Michael Steele darted into traffic to yell public insults to the effect that Obama is a sorry excuse for a Nobel laureate. Some prominent Washington figures with better home training than Steele have murmured their tepid congratulations. Others are heartily slapping the prez on the back. Obama himself, wisely, comes across as humbled and overwhelmed by the honor. If nothing else, the event illustrates in thick bright-red crayon just how childishly single-minded some Republicans are in finding any Obama outcome to be proof of his evil. (RNC position if Obama wins Nobel: Of course he won. He's a slick black strutter who has managed to sweet-talk the world. RNC position if Obama does not win Nobel: Of course he didn't win. Did you really think this gibbering fascist huckster was even in the running?)

But as I said, to me what's important about this is not how we in our Americanness try to hash out Obama's Nobel merit. What's important is what Europeans are actually trying to say in giving him the award and in their response to his receiving it. It looks to me as if, for Europe, this award is less about what Obama has accomplished and more about what he makes possible, which I'm guessing they see as a bona fide hallelujah moment after the apocalypse of the Bush years.

Listen to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who the New York Times quoted as saying the award marked “America’s return to the hearts of the world’s peoples.”

And here is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, proclaiming that “In a short time [Obama] has been able to set a new tone throughout the world and to create a readiness for dialogue.”

Then there was Nobel committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland, who declared, “The question we have to ask is who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world. And who has done more than Barack Obama?”

That whooshing sound you hear is a great gasp of relief from across the Atlantic at their now having an American partner who studies, thinks, plays well with others, and who keeps the cover securely locked over the blinking red buttons on the console.

Which is where jazz comes in.

Our country has a long tradition of missing or dissing the global meaning of things African-American. Just as jazz has been revered in Europe as essentially a very advanced and creative form of classical music while its primarily-black American practitioners have struggled here to be viewed as more than barroom entertainers, Europe now bows to a man (who happens to be black) who represents a return to global statesmanship on a teetering planet -- while Americans squabble about whether he is really a legal citizen and whether he really hates white people.

We Americans really need to get out more often.