Obama Is ‘Person Of The Year’ For Time Magazine But Not For Me

For better or for worse, President Barack Obama has become Time's Person of the Year. This is the second time that the President has held this honor, the first being 2008 when he was President-Elect.  This time around comes as he has been reelected President and is dealing with the fallout from Benghazi, but also trying to find a fiscal cliff solution with Speaker Boehner.

While you can complain about the choice, given the list they had to choose from, this might be the best of a shaky list to begin with.  The list included Egypt's President, Bill and Hillary Clinton and undocumented Americans, if you can believe that.

Time, for their part, explains every year that this is a choice of the person or thing that has impacted the news the most and you can't argue that President Obama has had a lot of impact on the news, for better or worse.  President Obama ran a strange campaign for reelection that would have, in a normal year, gotten him defeated at the ballot box.  Instead, he came out on top, in spite of Libya and what happened there.  He has made news with his lack of action on Fast and Furious and Benghazi.  Any other administration would have called for someone's head by now and only today are we seeing anyone in the state department paying the price for Benghazi with their jobs.  He is also making news by playing a game of chicken with Congress over the Bush tax cuts, proclaiming that taxes on the wealthy must go up.  All of this is tough to take, but he is at the center of it all.

If it were up to me, I think I would have made a different choice.  Rather than go with a world leader or item like the iPhone 5, I think I would make the choice of the American voter.  No other person or group has had as big of an impact on the world over the next four years.  The American voter has given us another 4 years of Barack Obama, which while he looks very much like a leader now, historically has shown us that he is more than willing to follow rather than lead.  The American voter gave us Mitt Romney to vote for on the GOP side.  The American voter spoke and for the next four years we'll be dealing with what we have had for the last four.  That is power and impact, more than just someone who has or has not acted in the best interest of the country.