TIME magazine has named President Obama its person of the year.
“He’s basically the beneficiary and the author of a kind of new America – a new demographic, a new cultural America that he is now the symbol of,” TIME editor Rick Stengel said on this morning’s Today show.
“He won re-election despite a higher unemployment rate than anybody’s had to face in basically in 70 years. He’s the first Democrat to actually win two consecutive terms with over 50 percent of the vote. That’s something we haven’t seen since Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” he added.
Stengel admitted that Obama edged out brave Pakistani activist Malala Yousufzai, a schoolgirl shot in the head for defying the Taliban — and who has vowed to continue her fight against their brand of extremism.
Other contenders on the shortlist were Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.
“His 5 million-vote margin of victory out of 129 million ballots cast shocked experts in both parties, and it probably would have been higher had so much of New York and New Jersey not stayed home after Hurricane Sandy,” states the TIME article announcing the choice. “He won many of the toughest battlegrounds walking away: Virginia by 4 points, Colorado by 5 and the lily white states of Iowa and New Hampshire by 6. He untied Ohio’s knotty heartland politics, picked the Republican lock on Florida Cubans and won Paul Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wis. (Those last two data points especially caught the President’s interest.) He will take the oath on Jan. 20 as the first Democrat in more than 75 years to get a majority of the popular vote twice. Only five other Presidents have done that in all of U.S. history.”
It’s the second time Obama has been named Person of the Year. The last time was when he won in 2008.
It remains to be seen if Barack Obama’s America is robust, independent, manly, pragmatic, or if it is just a sclerotic nation enfeebled by the expectation that something is always someone else’s fault, and that everything should be enabled by someone else.
I’m genuinely sorry this man, who has had so much just handed to him, will be considered great. For there is too much of the poseur in him. He less is brilliant than succintly reflects what the chattering classes think should look like on the outside.
Should read “He less is brilliant than succintly reflects what the chattering classes think brilliant should look like on the outside.”
I cannot stand the man, for there are too many not of the trendy skin colors, ethnicities, or gender having to truly justify themselves before society for me to accept the continual pass he is given. He has earned little.
As an explanation of why I am never going to join the hagiography bandwagon–I have multiple master’s and am finishing another from one of the best schools in field in the world. I also have work experience of a prestigious nature. By any measure, my resume is overkill of atomic proportions. I recently applied to teach at a community college, freshman and sophomore classes of a basic nature for the field. The interview was a smashing success, including the lecture example portion. I ended up not getting the position, apparently because of no explicit teaching experience. Presumably the other candidate who got the job did.
This was for a community college job.
This, when I think of my resume at the time I got rejected, I remember this when I think of what it apparently takes to teach Con Law III at one of the most prestigious schools in the world. I am afraid I will never be joining the Barack Obama bandwagon.
TIME is up. Maybe it could sell the rights to its Red Border.
Probably a good choice, but I’d print his picture upside-down, or with a Joker smile.
I’m not even so sure Barack Obama the “person” wins this so much as Barack Obama the “symbol”.
He’s never really been put out there on his ‘own’ thoughts and such, and has always been presented as the symbol of “A New Way”, or “A Punishment for those who won’t Get With the Program”.
His symbolism is the power, his skin color, his “world traveller” background, to be used as a weapon against all who’d dare disagree with the Left and its compliant Media.