Obama is Time’s person of the year, but…
From The North Star News & Analysis
President Barack Obama is Time magazine’s Person of The Year for the second time, the magazine announced. He also earned the honor in 2008 after his first election to the presidency.
Richard Stengel, Time magazine’s editor, wrote that President Obama is the first Democratic President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the nation’s 32nd chief executive, to win more than 50 percent of the vote in consecutive elections, and the first President since 1940 to win re-election with an unemployment rate north of 7.5 percent.
“He’s more than just a political figure; he’s a cultural one,” Stengel wrote. “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. About 40 percent of millennials — the largest generational cohort in U.S. history, bigger even than the baby boomers — are non-white. If his win in 2008 was extraordinary, then 2012 is confirmation that demographic change is here to stay.”
