 Barack Obama was named “Person of the Year” by Time magazine, which said he “suspended our politics, shattered decades of conventional wisdom and overcame centuries of the social pecking order.”
“It’s unlikely that you were surprised to see Obama’s face on the cover,” David Von Drehle wrote in the magazine’s cover story. “He has come to dominate the public sphere so completely that it beggars belief to recall that half the people in America had never heard of him two years ago.”
Time said its "Person of the Year" selection was the "person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year."
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Chinese film director Zhang Yimou (張藝謀), who organized the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing, were named runners-up.
Paulson "has come to play a historic role at a historic time," the magazine said. "A lame-duck president has given him nearly complete control over the country's economic policy in the midst of an epic financial collapse."
Sarkozy "has put France on the map," Time said.
"There are times when Nicolas Sarkozy resembles a force of nature rather than a conventional political leader. He has energy, ideas and vitality in abundance," it said, pointing to his handling of the Georgia crisis and the financial crisis.
Time said Palin, the Alaska governor and self-styled hockey mom who was plucked from obscurity to run for vice president on the Republican ticket, had made "the most astonishing political debut in modern times."
"She's fresh, she's phony; an inspiration to women, an insult to them; the bright future of the Republican Party, the cartoon princess of its populist past," it said. "She split people then, and they're divided still, and she's the one subplot in this story that remains utterly unresolved."
Time said Chinese director Zhang’s creative genius had given the world an unforgettable spectacle in the Olympics opening ceremony.
"He created arguably the grandest spectacle of the new millennium," it said.
The selection of Obama, 47, follows that of then-Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was named “Person of the Year” in 2007 for bringing his country “roaring back to the table of world power.”
Time, owned by Time Warner Inc., started the annual “Man of the Year” cover story in 1927 with Charles Lindbergh, the aviator who made the first solo trans-Atlantic flight. |
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