Bush is TIME’s “Man of the Year”

I imagine there will be a lot of crowing by conservatives and some grousing by democrats that Dubya was named as TIME’s Man of the Year (again).

However, before anyone gets too carried away, you have to remember that the label is due to influence that person has had for good or ill. Despite using terms that generally connotate positive characteristics, TIME seems to have a fairly good rationale for their decision: Dubya has “bold leadership” and is “one of the most influential presidents ever.” These are statements that I would generally agree with, as long as you keep in mind that none of these are in and of themselves positive or desirable… you can boldly lead a group of people off the edge of a cliff, and wield a great amount of influence while destroying your own organization. Remember, Hitler was TIME's Man of the Year once as well (no, that is not a direct comparison).

However, the changes in this country as a result of this administration have been apparent for some time… the key to making this distinction at this time is that he was able to get re-elected despite all of his failures (although I would strenuously object with their usage of the term “decisive”). Keeping that in mind, I think TIME selected the wrong guy: they should have gone with Karl Rove. Rove’s strategies of assaulting Kerry on his war record, keeping the economy out of the headlines, and turning out the base with major rightward movements on social issues were often questioned by analysts and had a large effect on our country’s dialectic and self-perception.

We’ll see what the article in that issue has to say when it comes in the mail, but that’s the way I see it at this point…

BTW, TIME also labels the conservative Power Line as its inaugural “Blog of the Year”… considering that they were the Nexis that really pulled apart the CBS Bush TANG story and gave Dan Rather a black eye, I guess that was probably appropriate. Even so, I have some irritation over that for two reasons: first, it was more a take-down of Rather than a take-down of the TANG story (which as a whole is still alive albeit out of the media); and second, it is probably not even the best or most important example of a blog-initiated take-down… that distinction belongs to Josh Marshall and his work which lead to Trent Lott’s resignation from the Senator Majority Leader position. However, that didn’t happen in 2004, so bad luck I guess…

Update: I see that the CNN story removed the “decisive victory” bit from their story… I can’t stand it when they toss stuff down the memory hole in that fashion (even relatively little stuff like this). It’s just not proper journalism.

Update: Kevin Drum has some different reasons for supporting TIME’s decision…