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About eleven or so-ish years ago, I found myself drunk and stoned and hosting a party at my parents’ house while they vacationed in Michigan. I was thinking about skating, or day dreaming. Olu was sitting next to me. So were some other fools. I leaned over to Olu and issued a bold claim: “I’m going to frontside crooked grind an eleven stair hand rail.” Olu raised his eyebrows a bit. “Yeah?” he said. I looked at him assuredly, as if I had already done it, and said, “Yeah.” My reasoning was simple. I could do frontside crooked grinds pretty well on ledges. Handrails were sloped ledges without the ledge. The only thing stopping me from crooked grinding a thirteen stair handrail was nothing but the initial shock of throwing myself onto a ledgeless ledge that sloped down a bit.

It was a claim that never came to pass, mainly because I didn’t film it, land it, or even try it. As far as claims go, it was bold. At that time, nobody had done such a trick and for good reason: that shit is hard. And in skateboarding, as in most other things, the trick is what is praiseworthy, not the claim.

President Barack Obama has made many bold claims since declaring his candidacy for the presidency. He was elected based on our (of course not all of our) individual and collective belief that he could deliver on at least a few of these claims. Unlike me, he has the talent to ride away clean on some pretty historic banger-enders. His bevy of hopefully soon-to-be bangers—health care reform, peace in the Middle East, the defeat of Al Qaeda and nuclear disarmament—seem to be doable. The world, of course, has Olu’s raised eyebrows and is listlessly asking, “Yeah?”

If he does one of these things, or any of the other many things he’s claimed, he could bring serious and, in my opinion, positive change, to the United States and possibly, the world. Though I’m skeptical, I believe he could bring about a Palestinian state, or help get some noninsured people health care, or help take out Al Qaeda’s upper echelons. I believe he could do these things, land these bangers, hand in front of the camera, in part because he seems to be able to.

But he hasn’t.

He’s hucked himself and his popularity down stairs, sacked twenty-ish popularity percentage points on health care reform and the bailout of the moribund American auto industry. He’s scraped his shins and hands across the course reality of Pyonyang, Jerusalem, Gaza, Basra, Kandahar, and Quetta. The flimers, with their disorienting fish-eye pointed up at him, are starting to tire of crouching and looking up, and have noticed that their batteries are just about drained. And Obama himself, though still full of youthful energy, looks nonetheless drained and a bit bruised.

The Nobel Committee recently rewarded Obama with its Peace Prize, saying “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

 “…those who are to lead…”

Obama hasn’t led yet. He has claimed he can, but he hasn’t done so yet. The Nobel Prize should be like the SOTY. You get it when you put down some major bangers, not before. You can’t end a part with a black screen and a message saying, “Ender Ender Forthcoming”

Obama has some solid footy. He’s clocked some good lines, helping register voters in the nineties, increasing tax credits for the poor as a state legislator, and as a Senator, helping to introduce a bipartisan-created web search engine to monitor federal spending. He got slo-mos on the nomination and multiple angles on the historic win. Now is time for the enders.

The Nobel Lauriets of the past have gotten those enders, at least most of them. Recently, Muhammad Yunus, of Bangladesh, created micro financing, which gave extremely small loans to the poorest of the poor to lift them out of dire poverty. Shirin Ebadi fought for women and children’s rights in her native Iran, the American Jody Williams won for her work in helping to eradicate landmines. Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi created a pro-democracy party and was elected to the post of Prime Minister while under house arrest (the elections, in 1990, were nullified by the ruling Junta). Martin Luther King Jr. won the Noble Peace Prize. As did Mother Teresa and Elie Wiesel. All of these people had produced enders, even as many of their causes and conflicts drag on.

Obama has yet to produce any enders. I think he can and I hope he will. He has his detractors, most of whom are thoughtful, and the loudest of whom are just haters. He doesn’t have to convince them any more than one has to convince SK8ERH8ER on Thrasher’s message board. He just has to produce.

But he hasn’t, so hopefully this prize, premature as it certainly is, will motivate him to roll away from one of his claims, hand in front of the fish eye.