This is the second time the president is chosen for the title.
(Photo: TIME Magazine)
Time magazine's editors have named President Obama as its 2012 Person of the Year. The president, who also nabbed the title after winning the 2008 presidential elections, was chosen "for seeking, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union."
The list had been narrowed down to eight contenders before the president edged out such choices as undocumented Americans, the Clintons, the Higgs Boson and Italian physicist Fabiola Giannati, Pakistani student activist Malala Yousafzai, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.
While some have already criticized the choice (former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, for instance, asked that other than "drive us over a fiscal cliff ... what the heck has he done?"), but Time's editors back their decision by saying Obama is a vision of a new America.
"He is the first President to embrace gay marriage and to offer work permits to many young undocumented immigrants. There has been much talk of the coalition of the ascendant—young people, minorities, Hispanics, college-educated women—and in winning re-election, Obama showed that these fast-growing groups are not only the future but also the present," editor Richard Stengel writes.
"The new America is not so much the old e pluribus unum—out of many, one—but, as [writer Ralph] Ellison says, one and yet many. That is Obama's America," Stengel continues. "For finding and forging a new majority, for turning weakness into opportunity and for seeking, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union, Barack Obama is TIME's 2012 Person of the Year."
What do you think of this year's choice?
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