If there were ever a moment that we need a little Kanye West, that time is now.

Because whether you agree or disagree with the president’s politics, there is no question that he’s not qualified for an award reserved for historical giants like Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr.

But yet the Nobel Committee announced Friday that it would be giving this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to none other than Barack Obama.

That’s where Kanye comes in. We can see him now, rushing the stage at the Nobel award ceremony on Dec. 10:

“Yo, Barack, I’m really happy for you, and I’m going to let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the biggest impacts on world peace in 2009!”

Okay, so maybe that’s a stretch. Hearing “Single Ladies” on the radio 750 times a day probably pushed people in the direction of violence, not the other way around.

But if Obama’s impact after less than two weeks in his new job was positive, it couldn’t have been positive by much.

After all, nominations for the prize had to be postmarked by Feb. 1. Obama’s inauguration was on Jan. 20. So the mystery Nobel nominator threw Obama’s name in the hat on the basis of 11 days in office?

That’s like giving 21-year-old Haley Joel Osment the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Or like canonizing Pope Benedict XVI into sainthood – despite the fact that he’s still alive.

In short, it’s more than a little ridiculous. And everybody seems to know it – even the Nobel committee, which did its best to come up with the most vague and empty rationale possible for Obama’s award.

Unlike Jody Williams’ 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, for her “work for the banning and clearing of anti-personnel mines,” or Muhammad Yunus’ 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for “advancing economic and social opportunities for the poor, especially women, through [his] pioneering microcredit work,” the rationale for Obama’s award sounds like it came out of a random word generator – ”for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

No doubt next year’s award will be given for, “the cooperation between international peoples of efforts in extraordinary diplomatic strength” or, perhaps, for “the effort of strengthening between peoples extraordinarily cooperative international diplomacy.”

Or maybe the Nobel committee should do the noble thing, and simply stop giving an award that has degenerated into such an obvious politicized sham.

Other, obviously less-deserving, top contenders for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize were Hu Jia, a Chinese human-rights activist serving a three-and-a-half year jail sentence for “inciting subversion of state power and the socialist system,” Colombian senator Piedad Córdoba, who has worked for the release of hostages held by a guerilla group in her country, and Sima Samar, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.

President Obama’s accomplishments, whatever they may be, cannot hold a candle to any of these individuals, let alone the greats who have received the award in the past.

Obama, for his part, seems to understand this.

“To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize,” he said in a speech.

It’s a sentiment we think we can all agree on.