Putin is Time Person of the Year

Time:

No one is born with a stare like Vladimir Putin's. The Russian President's pale blue eyes are so cool, so devoid of emotion that the stare must have begun as an affect, the gesture of someone who understood that power might be achieved by the suppression of ordinary needs, like blinking. The affect is now seamless, which makes talking to the Russian President not just exhausting but often chilling. It's a gaze that says, I'm in charge.

...

Vladimir Putin gives a first impression of contained power: he is compact and moves stiffly but efficiently. He is fit, thanks to years spent honing his black-belt judo skills and, these days, early-morning swims of an hour or more. And while he is diminutive—5 ft. 6 in. (about 1.7 m) seems a reasonable guess—he projects steely confidence and strength. Putin is unmistakably Russian, with chiseled facial features and those penetrating eyes. Charm is not part of his presentation of self—he makes no effort to be ingratiating. One senses that he pays constant obeisance to a determined inner discipline. The successor to the boozy and ultimately tragic Boris Yeltsin, Putin is temperate, sipping his wine only when the protocol of toasts and greetings requires it; mostly he just twirls the Montrachet in his glass. He eats little, though he twitchily picks the crusts off the bread rolls on his plate.

...

This is part of an obviously long story that attempts to justify this weird choice. Putin is a minor despot who is probably on par with Hugo Chavez only smarter. There were far better choices for the Person of the Year beginning with Gen. Petraeus. I suspect he was not chosen because Time and the liberals do not want to have to admit so publicly that they have been wrong about Iraq.

Judith Apter Klinghoffer thinks Time is nostalgic for a bipolar world.

Joe Kline says that Petraeus came in fourth, though if you read his piece you still have to wonder why he did not come in first. I think Klinghoffer may be on to something.