MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Obama named Time's 'Person of the Year' 2008”

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama was named “Person of the Year” by Time magazine, which said he “suspended our politics, shattered decades of conventional wisdom and overcame centuries of the social pecking order.”

"It's unlikely that you were surprised to see Obama's face on the cover," David Von Drehle wrote in the magazine's cover story. "He has come to dominate the public sphere so completely that it beggars belief to recall that half the people in America had never heard of him two years ago." Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Chinese film director Zhang Yimou, who organized the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing, were named runners-up. The selection of Obama, 47, follows that of then-Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was named "Person of the Year" in 2007 for bringing his country "roaring back to the table of world power." Time, owned by Time Warner Inc., started the annual "Man of the Year" cover story in 1927 with Charles Lindbergh, the aviator who made the first solo trans-Atlantic flight.