You have to hand it to Time magazine for managing to drum up interest in their Person of the Year choice. There was a time, I suppose up to about 15 years ago, when people really cared who Time put on the cover as Man of the Year. It meant something. But the media landscape changed, and those who care about the news can turn to a million instant outlets and portals. Time once had that marvelous voice-of-God quality of the great journalistic institutions; now it’s more obviously another voice in the choir, and a politically uniform and institutionally left-liberal choir it is.
But that’s another story. This one is about how they’ve done a good job building interest in the Person of the Year by offering a list of possible choices that contains so many losers that people couldn’t help reacting to it. Cable and broadcast news shows devoted stories and segments to it.
It was clever but also kind of nice and old-fashioned—traditional media carrying on its traditions, legacy media carrying on its legacy.
Time announces its choice tomorrow. Here a quick review of those it won’t be, and why, and who it will be.
• Bashar Assad, president of Syria. Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody likes him. There’s no way to balance the pros with the cons, no way to suggest he represents the future and not the past. It looks like he’s defeated his foes, but what does that signal long0term? He won’t do as a cover: His head looks like it was squeezed from a tube.
• Sen. Ted Cruz. Of course not. He is a living encapsulation of everything Time hates. Once they did an encapsulation of everything they hated when they put Newt Gingrich on the cover, 19 years ago. They had an awful, glowering portrait. He looked pale and creviced as the moon, and the copy as I remember it suggested he was small, cold and spooky to look at on stormy nights. But Time had to choose him: He was the biggest political story of the year, having led the Republican takeover of the House in 1994, and on his way to the speakership. They can avoid Cruz, so they will. His name was put on the list only to agitate the left, and get them popping on cable.
• Jeff Bezos. He had a big year in that he promised drone deliveries and bought the Washington Post—an investment that heartened fogies by suggesting old media has a place in the new world. If the drones happen and the Post begins to rise again toward its ancestral levels of journalistic indispensability, Bezos will be person of the year in a few years.
• Miley Cyrus. Oh dear. Why? I guess for looking like one of Satan’s pigtailed imps. Her choice would cause some controversy but too little to sell magazines. She offends only the sensitive, and they’re a diminishing demographic. To put her on the cover Time would have to laud her specific genius, which she doesn’t have, or deplore her as a signifier of unfortunate trends, which Time wouldn’t do because they don’t want to be caught on the wrong side of that argument.
• Barack Obama. Why? Because his face on the cover will depress sales? Because it will look just like last week’s cover? Because he’s hopelessly overexposed? Because he’s had his worst year? Because his poll numbers are down? Because he’s becoming boring even to his supporters? Because the Democratic Party is 12 months away from beginning to cut ties with him in order not to be dragged down? Because his signature achievement is revealed every day as a disingenuous flop? He is on the list because presidents are always on the list.
• Hassan Rouhani, president of Iran. Nah. What would that even mean? What he is as a leader remains to be seen. What is happening in the political life of his country remains to be seen. Maybe he represents an opening, maybe not. Maybe the nuclear deal is good, maybe not. Even the cover would be problematic. If Time used a photo of his normally expressionless and arguably rather smug face, no one would buy the magazine. If they commission a warm, friendly or interesting portrait it will open them to charges of being useful idiots for an evil regime. Anyway, this is America: no one knows what he looks like or who he is.
• Kathleen Sebelius. More boob bait for cable. Why would they pick her? Because she is one of the public faces of the biggest domestic-policy disaster in 100 years? Because she’s gormless, formless and deliberately obscure in all her public remarks? Because she stands for something people don’t like? Because she proved herself historically incompetent? Because not only is it true that no one knows anything about her but no one wants to know anything about her? She is a functionary, an administrator. She is a cabinet secretary.
• Edith Windsor. She would be a sentimental choice—her personal story is touching, she can arguably be called a harbinger of things to come, and Time is in line with her essential agenda. But no one beyond news sophisticates knows who she is. She’s a runner-up.
• Edward Snowden. This would be interesting. What he did this year was not only important but arguably world-changing. He has managed, like him or not, support him or not, to put front and center the issue America and the West had for a decade successfully ignored, and that is the depth, breadth and implications of government surveillance of the citizenry. That issue has now caused and will continue to cause huge discomfort and debate, and will one way or another bring legislative responses. A fresh look at Snowden’s motives and actions would require deep and original reporting, as would the question of what, exactly, he has given America’s foes and potential foes. Is he a traitor, a patriot, a whistleblower, a scoundrel? Did he put everything on the line for his beliefs, or for something smaller than belief, such as ego? What he has done will have real implications for our future. But he won’t sell magazines. Or rather he won’t sell the Person of the Year issue. People already think they have a position on him. They won’t want to get another headache, not during the holidays.
• Finally, Pope Francis. Who is the person I say will be chosen. Reasons, not in order of importance:
Because he has captured the imagination of the world. Because the Person of the Year issue comes out at Christmastime, and the choice of the pope will have seasonal synergy. Because he is coming up on one year on the throne of Peter; he is ripe for but has not yet received a major mainstream journalistic summing-up. Time will enjoy getting the jump. Because it’s clear his papacy is going to be an important one. Because Francis is different from his recent predecessors in ways Time’s editors and reporters would find congenial. Because pretty much everybody likes him. Because while many on the left and right feel they understand his economic populism, the exact form it will take—its precise nature, and what he’ll do and say down the road—is not fully clear, which gives the story a little mystery. Because the pope is a Jesuit, and Jesuits interest journalists because journalists think they’re smart. Because as a personality he is irresistable. Because he is a good man, not a bad one, and therefore makes the heart feel hopeful and not more anxious. And because he is, to a degree greater than any other leader you can name, exactly right for his time.
It will be Francis.