Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer deserves credit for his productive start at the helm of the state’s government.
But one of his latest moves — his unabashed support for giving a Nobel Peace Prize to President Donald Trump — is an embarrassing misstep that smacks of political overreach. Colyer is a candidate for governor this year and competing against Kris Kobach, the renegade Kansas secretary of state, for the job.
Kobach’s ties to the president are well-documented. Before he took office, Trump interviewed Kobach as a candidate for homeland security secretary. While Kobach didn’t land that job, he was handed the vice chairmanship of Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity as a consolation prize. The president disbanded the commission in January, but only after Donald Trump Jr. hosted a fundraiser for Kobach in Overland Park, Kan.
Colyer can’t compete with those ties to a president who maintains a positive job rating in Kansas of 52 percent approval and 44 percent disapproval. So Colyer did the next best thing by hopping aboard the Peace Prize bandwagon.
Colyer joined six other Republican governors in signing a letter that said the president should get the honor for his “transformative efforts to bring peace to the Korean peninsula.”
Let’s be clear: It’s undeniable that progress has been made in that troubled region of the globe. … But all this Peace Prize talk is wildly premature.
Just days after Colyer signed the letter, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was threatening to pull out of what would be a historic first meeting between a North Korean leader and a U.S. president. North Korea’s concerns revolved around American insistence on an irreversible decommissioning of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.
By the end of last week, Trump was in overdrive as he sought to reassure the North Korean leader through promises of “very strong” protections if Kim stands firm on the deal.
Still, the letter Colyer and the governors signed could soon be moot. The letter said that even though Trump had been in office for little more than a year, he “achieved an unprecedented victory for global peace and security.”
Not so fast. Trump surely would benefit from the prestige of an award that previously was presented to Nelson Mandela, Woodrow Wilson and Mother Teresa.
Colyer can benefit from aligning himself more closely with Trump supporters, who are regarded as motivated voters. But let’s actually get the deal done before we starting handing out prizes.
— The Kansas City Star
