Bush Hosts Gore

President Bush is hosting the Nobel Prize winners at the White House after Thanksgiving. One of these winners is former vice president Al Gore. Gore now has to be honored by the man who beat him seven years ago. Bush is hosting five American winners of this year’s Nobel Prize winners in the Oval Office on the 26th of November. The president regularly invites Nobel winners for a handshake and photograph, and this year is no different. The White House was very accommodating to the former vice president, and even changed the proposed date because Gore had a conflict. The president wanted to make sure that Gore would be able to go. This is a kind of awkward situation none the less, but not the first time something like this has happened. President Bill Clinton honored Robert J. Dole, who he defeated in the presidential race, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom three days before taking the oath of office for the second time in January 1997.

The Nobel Prize was established in 1895 in the will of Alfred Nobel. It was first awarded in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace in 1901. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was instituted by Sweden’s central bank in 1968 and first awarded in 1969. The Nobel Peace Prize conveys social prestige. The Nobel Prizes, except for the Nobel Peace Prize, and the Prize in Economics are presented in Stockholm, Sweden on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death. The Nobel Peace Prize and its recipients’ lectures are presented at the annual Prize Award Ceremony in Oslo, Norway, also on December 10.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/16/AR2007111602050.html?hpid=moreheadlines