Time names Obama as “Person of the Year“

18 December 2008

Time magazine has named US president-elect Barack Obama as its 2008 Person of the Year.

"For having the confidence to sketch an ambitious future in a gloomy hour, and for showing the competence that makes Americans hopeful he might pull it off, the president-elect is Time's Person of the Year,'' the newsweekly said.

It said US treasury secretary Henry Paulson was the first runner-up followed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and China's Zhang Yimou, who directed the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games.

Time magazine says that president-elect Barack Obama  sits in a nondescript office, on the freezingly cold December day, mentally unpacking the crate of crushing problems - some old, some new, all ugly - that he is about to inherit as the 44th President of the United States.

Most of his hours inside the presidential-transition office are spent in this bland and bare-bones room.

On the economy he says that "It is not clear that the economy's bottomed out." , "And so even if we take a whole host of the right steps in terms of the economy, two years from now it may not have fully recovered."