Time names Obama its Person of the Year
Find out why the magazine chose the president, and learn more about the four runners-up.
President Obama is the 2012 Person of the Year, says Time magazine.
“We are in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes, and Obama is both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America,” explains Time Managing Editor Richard Stengel.
That America is shaped by “young people, minorities, Hispanics, college-educated women,” who, Obama showed, “are not only the future but also the present,” Stengel writes.
Obama, he says, is more of a cultural figure than a political one. “He is the first president to embrace gay marriage and to offer work permits to many young undocumented immigrants.”
He’s also the “first Democratic president since FDR to win more than 50 percent of the vote in consecutive elections and the first president since 1940 to win re-election with an unemployment rate north of 7.5 percent.”
Runners-up for Person of the Year were:
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