Home > Time names President Bush Person of the Year

Time names President Bush Person of the Year

by Open-Publishing - Monday 20 December 2004
19 comments

Edito Newspapers-mags USA


U.S. President George W. Bush’s bold, uncompromising leadership and his clear-cut election victory made him Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2004, its managing editor said Sunday.

Time chose Bush "for sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his 10-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters this time around that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years," Jim Kelly wrote in the magazine.

Bush was also Time’s choice to appear on the cover in 2000 after winning the presidential election despite losing the popular vote.

His father, President George H. W. Bush, was named "Man of the Year" in 1990 for what Time called his mastery of foreign policy and his wavering domestic record.

Last year the magazine picked "The American Soldier."

"Obviously many supporters of the president will be pleased, many people who do not support the president will probably sigh," Kelly said.

"But even those who may not have voted for him will acknowledge that this is one of the more influential presidents of the last 50 years."

Kelly said he and his staff debated giving the award to others including Karl Rove, the president’s influential political adviser, and filmmakers Michael Moore and Mel Gibson.

The winner must be "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse," he said.

U.S. aviator Charles Lindbergh was Time’s first "Man of the Year" in 1927. Some selections have been notoriously unpopular, such as Adolf Hitler in 1938, Joseph Stalin in 1939 and 1942, and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.

This year the magazine named the conservative "Power Line" as its first "Blog of the Year." Kelly said blogs, Web sites that often mix news, gossip and opinion, are "here to stay." (Reuters)

– http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/19/ti...

Forum posts

  • Time magazin should be ashamed of itself. Instead of giving the title: Person of the year they
    should write: Put this Person into Prison this Year.

    It shows how rotten the journalism has gone in the United States.

    • I’m with you....Jail the whole Administration. The sooner the better for all of us.
      Changed the rules of politics, that’s right W. has brought electoral fraud to new heights.

  • it is about time that someone with some balls got cover, all those pacifist Euro freaks will flip over this:-)
    Little do that know that in the end the whole world will be better off!!

  • I suggest going to your local retailers and showing them what you think of the magazine when it comes out....

    • I suppose it’s only relevant that ’TIME’ made him ’Man of the Year’ if ’TIME’ is considered to be a bastion of indpendent, unbiased journalism.

      Just a minute !! This isn’t the same TIME magazine owned by TIME WARNER -who were acquired by AOL, who donated $1.6 million to BUSH in 2000 campaign and over $3 million in 2004 ? NO !! Well what a fucking COINCIDENCE.. WHAT ? no this can’t be true.

      Oh Well, I guess we can’t treat this nomination with the integrity and admiration of a figure that is clearly of retarded intelligence, and we will continue to gawp, open mouthed, at the Human/Chimp crossbreed with what is truly Shock and Awe.

    • great answer, really great....

    • Thanks for the scoop. I had cancelled AOL several years back. Thanks to DSL. Today, I cancelled my TIMES magazine subscription too. By the way I do not have Time Warner Cable.

  • "For sharpening the debate until the choices bled, for reframing reality to match his design, for gambling his fortunes-and ours-on his faith in the power of leadership, George W. Bush is TIME’s 2004 Person of the Year."

    http://www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/2004/story.html

    For reframing reality to match his design?

    306573.jpg

    • Cet idiot l’homme de l’année!!!
      That idiot man of the year!!!
      We’re all amused to death, here in Europe...
      But don’t worry, we’ve got our own fabulous idiots too!
      Blair, Berlusconi, Chirac, Schroeder, Putin...
      What a fantastic festival of dumbasses!!!

      Love to all american people from France!

    • Nous vous aimons, aussi!

  • TimeWarner AOL and CNN are nonstop propaganda machines. It’s their lawyers who write the legislation that is rubber-stamped by our phony Congress. It would make Berlusconi proud!

    • If I had a choice it would have been Mia Hamm or Lance Armstrong, or both of them. At least these people exemplfy the best in athletics, if not in human values. They play hard, play fair, are honest, hard-working people, and they’re both winners (always a good point for person of the year). They also didn’t steal anything, bomb anything, kill anyone, defraud anyone, or even insult anyone.

      I guess Time prefers to stay on point with their lame political news coverage rather than show up as real Americans. Hey, editors of Time and other mainstream publications, wake up, nobody gives a shit. Just over half of the voting-eligible population even bothered to cast a vote, and Bush got 28% of what was available - and he stole that!

      Really, in 2008, about 35% of eligible voters will actually cast votes because the system is corrupt beyond measure as are the politicians, media and corporations. So, you guys just go on. The rest of us out here in the parallel America will go on with our lives and ignore you.

  • Beautify America

    • It wouldn’t surprise me if that isn’t far behind...

      Why doesn’t it surprise me that a Bush supporter can’t give a reasonable argument for Bush deserving to be called Man of the Year by Time magazine. Boo hoo! Little Republican baby no like no Bush haters. Baby wanna smash ’em! Yeah! SMASH EM!

      Hey! There’s a lot of Bush haters in Iraq - I suggest YOU go over there and take the place of a poorly armed 20 year old reservist who’s been back door drafted because so few Americans want to enlist for an unjust, badly-planned war. You obviously have the might is right mentality.

    • What’s the point of doing that? The opposition to Dubya has repeated the BUSHITLER mantra so often that reasonable discourse has given way to incessant hatemongering.

      Never mind that the Iraq war has divided groups into either being part of the solution or part of the problem. Never mind that if it were an imperialistic "blood for oil" battle the USA would have invaded Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, and Canada just for grins. Never mind that it’s been a goal of the Islamofascist fundamentalists since the Carter administration to defeat the West and install a caliphate in its place. Never mind that 32 nations have contributed to the effort to stabilize Iraq following Saddam’s removal from power, it was a "unilateral" invasion. Never mind that the UN is a corrupt, impotent and Socialist world body not the slightest bit interested in human rights or democracy, the USA is an imperialist hegemony only concerned with feeding its capitalist maw. Never mind that Clinton during his eight years in office scaled back the defense budget and personnel to draconian levels, and penned authorization to use force in Iraq to bring Saddam into compliance with UNSC resolutions - the war was revenge for making assassination attempts at Poppa Bush and to steal their oil.

      Just never mind. Beating you frothing moonbats over the head with the facts won’t make you change your minds.

    • They should pass a new law that when the draft is brought back they take the voter registration lists and start with anyone who is a registered Republican. Its their war, they should have to go fight in it.

  • BUSH - HITLER, TWO OF A KIND