The Peace Process

Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize Friday — 24 years late. The former U.S. President should have been a laureate in 1978, when he brokered the Camp David accords with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin. But the Egyptian and Israeli leaders shared that year's award, while Carter was left out for the most mundane of reasons, says Geir Lundestad, secretary to the Norwegian Nobel Committee. "Nobody nominated him in time."

This isn't the first year Carter's nomination arrived promptly. But in selecting him now, the Nobel panel made an unambiguous statement: as the...