Somehow or another, the grade-C student, war dodger, and all-around good-ol-boy became TIME Person of the Year 2004.
It’s not astonishing. What is fascinating is that Time, in its infinite (pun not intended) wisdom, decided that George W. Bush was a historical marker of some sort — that he represents an American achievement on some order and therefore even greater recognition. Mr. Bush won a narrow majority, has “the lowest December [approval] rating for a re-elected President in Gallup’s history,” and has already gone back on his recent acceptance pledge to be a re-uniter.
The real question is who should have been picked. According to the posts on Metafilter, every U.S. President in office (except or Mr. Ford) has been covered since 1932. If not the President, who? Certainly, the Democrats fell flat on a race that was theirs to lose, religious figures are divisive, the array of media anchors are publicly seen as failures, business leaders have not led, the military is failing to win publicly accepted wars, and local governments receive no national attention. Internationally, the Europeans and the U.N. have not stood up to genocide while the Russians have failed themselves. In Asia, China has grown but the cost is unknown.
Who?