Surprise! Barack Obama is Time Mag’s 2008 Man of the Year

We can pretty much count on Barack Obama being Time’s man of the year for the next four years.

Have you read Why History Can’t Wait? If not, I wouldn’t recommend reading it near meal time if you have a strong gag reflex. Some of the highlights (emphasis mine):

It is here that we find Barack Obama one soul-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. You would think the President-elect — a guy who draws 100,000 people to a speech in St. Louis, Mo., who raises three-quarters of a billion dollars, who is facing the toughest first year since Franklin Roosevelt’s — might merit a leather chair. Maybe a credenza? A hutch?

Didn’t Ronald Reagan have a bit to deal with when he took office? Oh yeah, I forgot, he was a Republican.

“And then the third thing that keeps me up at night is the issue of nuclear proliferation,” Obama continues, sailing on through the horribles. “And then the final thing, just to round out my Happy List, is climate change. All the indicators are that this is happening faster than even the most pessimistic scientists were anticipating a couple of years ago.”

The fact that more scientists refute the global warming theory isn’t mentioned. Talk about “unilateral!”

He is a man about his business — a Mr. Fix It going to Washington. That’s why he’s here and why he doesn’t care about the furniture. We’ve heard fine speechmakers before and read compelling personal narratives. We’ve observed candidates who somehow latch on to just the right issue at just the right moment. Obama was all these when he started his campaign: a talented speaker who had opposed the Iraq war and lived a biography that was all things to all people. But while events undermined those pillars of his candidacy, making Iraq seem less urgent and biography less relevant, Obama has kept on rising. He possesses a rare ability to read the imperatives and possibilities of each new moment and organize himself and others to anticipate change and translate it into opportunity.

First of all, the reason Iraq seems less urgent is that the surge Mr. Obama vehemently opposed is working. Did anyone else notice that the biggest news coming out of Iraq this week is that a man threw his shoes at the US President?  And precisely what has Mr. Obama fixed? Mr. Fix It? Please!

Obama’s competence fills him with a genuine self-confidence. “I’ve got a pretty healthy ego,” he allows. That’s clear when he offers a checklist for voters to use in judging his performance two years from now.

They’ll take that down, probably not long after Inauguration Day.

And: “Outside of specific policy measures, two years from now, I want the American people to be able to say, ‘Government’s not perfect; there are some things Obama does that get on my nerves. But you know what? I feel like the government’s working for me. I feel like it’s accountable. I feel like it’s transparent. I feel that I am well informed about what government actions are being taken. I feel that this is a President and an Administration that admits when it makes mistakes and adapts itself to new information.’”

Open Government?! Transparency? Did they not hear him tell a reporter not to waste his time asking a question? What about the reporters thrown off the campaign plane? Or the ones blacklisted for asking Joe Biden real questions?

His official theme was change, but a specific kind of change: the nuts-and-bolts kind you can see and measure. Voters were invited to believe because Obama kept delivering the goods.

What has he delivered, besides promises? Other than winning an election he hasn’t really done or accomplished much of anything, but that’s no matter to Time Magazine. They believe in their Messiah, they have faith.

Obama is a businesslike boss. He prefers briefing papers tightly written and shows up for meetings fully prepared. He expects people to challenge him when they think he is wrong and to back up their ideas with facts. He’s not a shouter — “Hollering at people isn’t usually that effective,” he explains — but if he thinks you’ve let him down, you’ll know it. “What was always effective with me as a kid — and Michelle and I find it effective with our kids — is just making people feel really guilty,” he says.

He expects people to challenge him? Is that a joke? Reporters can’t even ask the man questions! It is true that he likes to make people feel guilty, but they forgot to mention he also likes to stoke envy.

Yes, Obama could talk — like nobody’s business — but talk didn’t win the election. According to the daily tracking polls, the tumblers clicked into place precisely at the moment the financial hurricane hit, when the wizards of Wall Street proved as incompetent as Oz and neither the President nor the leaders of Congress nor the Treasury boss nor Senator McCain could deliver a rescue package. When this group failure provoked a stock-market crash in early October, Americans asked, “Can’t anybody here play this game?” Astounding as it would have seemed scant months before, their gaze fell on the one fixed point in the widening gyre: a guy named Barack Hussein Obama.

At least now we can use his middle name. Let’s hope Barack Hussein Obama realizes that Keynesian economics aren’t the way to fix the economy. Unfortunately, it appears he plans to follow the model of Japan in the 1990′s. What’s also known as the “lost decade.” But hey, Obama’s different, he’ll single handedly change the laws of economy and human nature and the world will be a better place. It also appears they forgot that the stock market crashed further in the days following election day.

Unveiling these and other picks at a series of daily press conferences, Obama assured the public that he wanted to move fast, so fast that trainloads of money might be ready for him to dispatch across the country with a stroke of his pen on Inauguration Day. The idea of another wave of spending horrifies America’s surviving conservatives...

At least they got something right.