Time's odd choice

Michael Barone:

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. This was not always so, as you can check by looking at Time's archive of person of the year (originally man of the year) selections over the years. During World War II, Time chose Gen. George Marshall as man of the year for 1943 and Dwight Eisenhower for 1944. To be sure, Time did not always name those admired by its founder, Henry Luce, a liberal Republican and interventionist in the run-up to World War II. For 1942, it named Joseph Stalin for the Soviets' successful resistance to the Nazi invasion that began in 1941, but it had also, justifiably, named Stalin as the man of the year in 1939, because the Hitler-Stalin pact agreed to in August 1939 enabled Adolf Hitler to invade Poland without serious opposition. Indeed, Time also named Hitler man of the year for 1938, when he got Britain and France to appease him by destroying the power of Czechoslovakia to resist conquest.

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He goes on to give a history of the award and the changing bias of Time. I think there was an additional factor at work in the Petraeus snub. Gen. Petraeus' success demonstrated just how wrong the liberal establishment was about saving the situation in Iraq. When Democrats in Congress go on record over 60 times on the wrong side of history and vote for defeat while we are winning, that would be much harder to hide if they named Gen. Petraeus Man of the Year. Forcing Democrats to face up to their misplaced desperation for defeat was something the liberals at the magazine were not willing to do.