Who Will Be TIME'S Person of the Year?

Back on July 1, I ruminated on who would be named TIME's Person of the Year if the magazine had been forced to make its choice based on just the first six moths of the year. The criteria for naming the POY are a bit nebulous and changeable, in spite of the succinct statement the magazine tries to make about them each year. The selection is the person who, for good or ill, appears to have had the greatest influence or is most in sync with prevailing, important trends in the year ending.

In the past, TIME has felt free to be creative its choices. One year, the computer was named Machine of the Year. The American military has been named Persons of the Year and one year, notable for the strides toward equality made by women, the magazine spoke of all women--at least in the US and other western democracies--as Persons of the Year. Despots, simply because of the long shadows they cast over the globe, have, at times, received the tag.

Midyear, 2006, I presented a list of possible POYs that included Warren Buffet, Patrick Fitzgerald, Al Gore, Rick Warren, George W. Bush, Katie Couric, Gnarls Barkley, and Pope Benedict XVI.

In a later update, I hesitantly added two "tyrannical tots: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, and Kim Jong Il, president of North Korea," who, like Hitler and Stalin before them, were casting dark shadows over the world. In the more creative--and I think, easily defensible, vein, I also added two rising economic giants, India and China. If you want to see the rationale I offered for each of those POY candidates, go here.

The funny thing is that, a little more than five months later, few of those candidates look credible.

• Al Gore seems to have found his stride as a private citizen, but the inconvenient truth is that he still hasn't convinced enough of the country of the severity of global warming.
• The two Warrens--Buffet and Rick--wield enormous influence over millions of people in different ways, but the influence of each is more of the long-term variety, perhaps immeasurable.
• Fitzgerald is a dedicated prosecutor, but the jury is still out on his impact on us all.
• As to President Bush, two words: November 7.
• Two words also for Couric: low ratings.
• Gnarls Barkley have proved to be popular on both sides of the Atlantic and will likely have sustained careers, but have thus far not registered very high on the Rochter scale.
• Ditto, in a way, for the Pope...although one wonders, at his age, how sustained his career will be.

Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il still loom as malevolent characters, maintaining their candidacies for POY. And, I think, China and India still could be credibly named Economic Powers of the Year.

A new list is obviously required. But, racking my brain, I can think of only one additional candidate. Ladies and gentlement, I present to you Nancy Pelosi. (Remember, you conservatives wretching at your keyboards right now, the criteria states that the POY "is the person who, for good or ill, appears to have had the greatest influence or is most in sync with prevailing, important trends in the year ending.")

President Bush yesterday accurately said that Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues had administered a "thumpin'" to him and his fellow Republicans. (Thumpin' has been a favorite word around our house for years, by the way.)

Pelosi, leader of Democrats in the House of Representatives, imposed a much-needed and--for Democrats--countercultural, discipline on her colleagues several years back. She also worked with Democratic House campaign leader Rahm Emanuel to enlist moderates and Iraq War veterans to run and win under their party's banner, presenting a different face to the public. All this in spite of her undeniable credentials as a classic liberal Democrat.

On top of that, Pelosi, at year's end is poised to become the first female and first Italian-American Speaker of the House. Given that, as in elections and college basketball rankings, last minute surges give POY candidates the advantage, Pelosi has to be counted as the frontrunner.

As I perfunctorily scan the Arts, the international arena, sports, and academia, I can't come up with any other viable candidates for POY. It's Pelosi, the tyrannical tots, or the emerging economic colossi, India and China.

Of course, as I pointed out in my post in July:

...the very notion of a Person of the Year (called Man of the Year until a short time ago, reflecting, no doubt, our thankfully and belatedly progressing attitudes about the equality of the genders) is an anomaly, a vestige from the past. Much of the history of History as a discipline has been marked by the belief that great people make history and that the rest of the residents of the planet at any given time are also-rans.

Fortunately the ablest students and teachers of History understand that the "great people" usually reflect their times or are part of a cast of millions (now billions) who change the flow of the human story. Yet the prominent often do play special roles as our collective representatives or as catalysts of change.

Given those obvious limits and needed clarifications, not to mention the fact that such selections are inherently subjective, who do you offer as candidates for TIME'S Person of the Year?

[THANKS TO: Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice for linking to this post.]

[THANKS ALSO TO: Adam at A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago for including a link to this post with his ideas on this subject. AND THANKS ALSO GO TO: Terry Hull of Terra Extraneous for linking here. I appreciate it all very much!]