Vladimir Putin. Man of the Year.

[gWIL 0]

"In a year when Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize and green became the new red, white and blue; when the combat in Iraq showed signs of cooling but Baghdad's politicians showed no signs of statesmanship; when China, the rising superpower, juggled its pride in hosting next summer's Olympic Games with its embarrassment at shipping toxic toys around the world; and when J.K. Rowling set millions of minds and hearts on fire with the final volume of her 17-year saga—one nation that had fallen off our mental map, led by one steely and determined man, emerged as a critical linchpin of the 21st century.

 

Russia lives in history—and history lives in Russia. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Soviet Union cast an ominous shadow over the world. It was the U.S.'s dark twin. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia receded from the American consciousness as we became mired in our own polarized politics. And it lost its place in the great game of geopolitics, its significance dwarfed not just by the U.S. but also by the rising giants of China and India. That view was always naive. Russia is central to our world—and the new world that is being born. It is the largest country on earth; it shares a 2,600-mile (4,200 km) border with China; it has a significant and restive Islamic population; it has the world's largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and a lethal nuclear arsenal; it is the world's second largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia; and it is an indispensable player in whatever happens in the Middle East. For all these reasons, if Russia fails, all bets are off for the 21st century. And if Russia succeeds as a nation-state in the family of nations, it will owe much of that success to one man, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

 

No one would label Putin a child of destiny. The only surviving son of a Leningrad factory worker, he was born after what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War, in which they lost more than 26 million people. The only evidence that fate played a part in Putin's story comes from his grandfather's job: he cooked for Joseph Stalin, the dictator who inflicted ungodly terrors on his nation.

 

When this intense and brooding KGB agent took over as President of Russia in 2000, he found a country on the verge of becoming a failed state. With dauntless persistence, a sharp vision of what Russia should become and a sense that he embodied the spirit of Mother Russia, Putin has put his country back on the map. And he intends to redraw it himself. Though he will step down as Russia's President in March, he will continue to lead his country as its Prime Minister and attempt to transform it into a new kind of nation, beholden to neither East nor West.

 

TIME's Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor. It is not an endorsement. It is not a popularity contest. At its best, it is a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world—for better or for worse. It is ultimately about leadership—bold, earth-changing leadership. Putin is not a boy scout. He is not a democrat in any way that the West would define it. He is not a paragon of free speech. He stands, above all, for stability—stability before freedom, stability before choice, stability in a country that has hardly seen it for a hundred years. Whether he becomes more like the man for whom his grandfather prepared blinis—who himself was twice TIME's Person of the Year—or like Peter the Great, the historical figure he most admires; whether he proves to be a reformer or an autocrat who takes Russia back to an era of repression—this we will know only over the next decade. At significant cost to the principles and ideas that free nations prize, he has performed an extraordinary feat of leadership in imposing stability on a nation that has rarely known it and brought Russia back to the table of world power. For that reason, Vladimir Putin is TIME's 2007 Person of the Year. "

 

 

Time grows some balls and picks a really good choice. Remember last year when it was "you" or some crap.

 

 

[megaadvice 0]

Decent pick

 

But this award lost all meaning when they picked Guiliani in 2001 and not Osama Bin Laden

[ZGangsta 0]

Yeah, a much better choice then "You", "The Good Samaritans", "The American Soldier", or "The Whistleblowers". Which have been 4 of the last 5. I'd heard that they were considering going with "green" as the person of the year this year too.

I mean, it's "person of the year" stop with the collective noun/concepts crap.

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

Yeah, a much better choice then "You", "The Good Samaritans", "The American Soldier", or "The Whistleblowers". Which have been 4 of the last 5. I'd heard that they were considering going with "green" as the person of the year this year too.

I mean, it's "person of the year" stop with the collective noun/concepts crap.

 

Yea I hear that. "You" was especially lame but "green" would've taken the cake as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully picking Putin will get them back on track.

 

I think Putin's a good pick. Anyone who managed to slowly erode democratic checks in Russia over the last eight years under the eyes of the Western media and Western governments and then manage his succession from the presidency to prime minister so smoothly deserves some kind of honor, albeit in a more Machiavellian sense.

[Guest Smues]

It wasn't Al Gore, so it works for me.

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

It would've been just like the modern Time to say that "Green" is the person of the year, seeing as there are about three Global Warming: Special Edition issues a year. Has any publication gotten so bad, so fast?

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Al Gore shouldn't feel too bad, as Rolling Stone has made him their "Man of the Year" pretty much every issue.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

I think Putin's a good pick. Anyone who managed to slowly erode democratic checks in Russia over the last eight years under the eyes of the Western media and Western governments and then manage his succession from the presidency to prime minister so smoothly deserves some kind of honor, albeit in a more Machiavellian sense.

 

But Bush looked into Putie's eyes!

[Red Baron 0]

It would've been just like the modern Time to say that "Green" is the person of the year, seeing as there are about three Global Warming: Special Edition issues a year. Has any publication gotten so bad, so fast?

 

Playboy???

 

 

Mind you I never thought Time Magazine was anything great, but I had no qualms of their last two choices as "Man of the Year".

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

It would've been just like the modern Time to say that "Green" is the person of the year, seeing as there are about three Global Warming: Special Edition issues a year. Has any publication gotten so bad, so fast?

 

 

Hasn't the dissemination of knowledge through the internet mostly destroyed the magazine as a viable medium anyways? Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone are two that have basically faded from culturally significant to niche market in recent years, complete with substandard reporting and photography.

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

Do you mean Time, or just the magazine itself? I'd tend to agree. We maintain a subscription to Time, at this point, for no other reason than tradition. I've been reading it since 1999 and it just seems like it's been on a steady decline for the last four years. The content seems to be skewing more toward poorly written pop culture nonsense, and the political side of things has become terrible, with countdowns till Bush is out of office (what is this, theredborder.blogspot.com?) and shitloads of environmental features that really serve no purpose. Maybe every now and then we get a nice photo essay or editorial, but there's just so much crap now. I think the general interest magazine is very much a dying medium. I can get breezy-voiced crap about Britney Spears and the hot midseason prime-time lineup from Yahoo or somewhere like that, should I want it. Scholarly journals and niche publications will be able to keep their heads above water, but there's really no use for Time or Newsweek any longer, I don't believe.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

I was referring mostly to the medium itself, and the problems you describe with Time seem to be a microcosm of the effects plaguing the entire industry. There are certain publications that have used the changes to their advantage by branching out into more long-form pieces that don't find their way to the short attention span readers of the internet. But any magazine directly focused on traditional news, sports or entertainment seem to be fighting a losing battle.

[Nightwing 0]

I think Putin's a good pick. Anyone who managed to slowly erode democratic checks in Russia over the last eight years under the eyes of the Western media and Western governments and then manage his succession from the presidency to prime minister so smoothly deserves some kind of honor, albeit in a more Machiavellian sense.

 

But Bush looked into Putie's eyes!

 

You forget: Bush is always squinting.

[ZGangsta 0]

Seeing the usual Fox News morons standing up and declaring David Patraeus the Man of the Year for completely winning the war in Iraq and turning it into a paradise is pretty funny.

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

Seeing the usual Fox News morons standing up and declaring David Patraeus the Man of the Year for completely winning the war in Iraq and turning it into a paradise is pretty funny.

 

Well to be fair to Patraeus, he has managed to turn the situation on the ground in a more positive direction than it was under several commanders before him. The problem is that all of the people that came before him have created such a mess in terms of the deBaathification process, Saddam's trial, prisoner abuse, not building enough infrastructure, pissing off local clerics, isolating Sunnis and being seen as agents of Shiites, etc. that the situation is going to take a long time to clean it up. It looks as if we've found the right guy for the job but finding him took too damn long and now the public's patience with this war effort is done.

 

I laughed back during Bush's first term when he said he could trust Putin. Putin had already begun to erode democratic checks in Russia towards the end of the Clinton administration and had launched major government attacks on independent media outlets. Also, when the West was basically mum about Putin's attacks on Yukos back in 2003-2004 I knew that was a bad call. I find that our government has a very poor understanding of the situation that is occuring in Moscow right now and it may not be a bad idea to get more intelligence analysts/intelligence field agents in there.

[Perfxion 0]

If all the news coverage this year, person of the year should have went to Britney Spears since she seem to have every moment become national nightly news. But for a person that (somewhat) matters, so Putin makes a good choice.

[The Robfather 0]

I've never been much on Time's person of the year. It seems like shameless attention grabbing on their part.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

I thought Kim Jong Il should've gotten it last year, for basically standing up to the supposed biggest power in the world and suffering essentially no consequences for it (missile tests, nuclear reactors, etc). Instead they did the stupid "You" garbage that the Daily Show had a ball skewering. At least Time kind of made up for it this year by picking someone who actually matters.

[Guest Vitamin X]

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