The Discerning Texan

Time magazine has chosen Vladimir Putin as the person of the year. This strikes me as an odd choice. Yes, Putin has been an important player on the international stage; yes, he has frustrated American efforts to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons; yes, he has been more intransigent on asserting Russian power on the "near abroad," the former Soviet republics, which, like Ukraine, Georgia, and the Baltics, seek to take a different course. But he has been doing these things for years, and he has made no important advances, at best incremental progress, in calendar year 2007.

In contrast, Time's fourth runner-up for person of the year, Gen. David Petraeus, has made an enormous difference this past year. With the help of many others (which is true of any leader), he has turned around the military situation and the political situation (if not at the top-down national level, then at the bottom-up local level) in Iraq. What seemed to be an imminent American defeat has been transformed into an imminent American success. And Petraeus has done more than any other person to turn that around.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Time didn't name Petraeus as the person of the year because its editors didn't want to spotlight and honor American success. ...

[... ] Which brings us back to the person of the year for 2007, Vladimir Putin. Yes, he's a consequential figure, who has just nominated a successor who looks like his pawn (at least for now; for a contrary view, see this speculation). But Russia ain't what it was when Time saw Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov as a dynamic duo. And who are Time's runners-up? Al Gore, who exaggerated the IPCC climate forecast by a factor of 20 to say that New York and London would be flooded by global warming (they weren't in the 13th century, when the weather was a lot warmer than it is now). J. K. Rowling, who has made millions writing books that children and adults love to read; all power to her, but she's not exerting the kind of influence over human affairs that Hitler did in 1938 and Stalin did in 1939. Or Hu Jintao, who is presiding over a system whose initiation, in 1978, was rightly honored by Time as a turning point in history. I have on my bookshelves somewhere (actually, it's not there, because I've just moved and haven't reshelved my books) a book by a China scholar entitled 1587: A Year of No Significance. I bought it because of the title and haven't gotten around to reading it yet. Hu Jintao is, so far as I can tell, like that book, of no significance. David Petraeus, No. 4 on Time's list, has made a much greater—a huger—difference. But Time doesn't want to acknowledge that, because to do so would be to admit that George W. Bush is not an ignorant tyrant and that the United States is not on the losing side of history. Better to elevate Vladimir Putin to a significance he does not deserve. Shame.