SURPRISE?

Obama Time’s Person of the Year

Beat out Bill and Hillary Clinton.

At least it’s better than when Time named “you” the person of the year, right? Time magazine named President Obama 2012 “person of the year,” managing editor Rick Stengel said Wednesday. The editors choose the honor for the person—or sometimes group—that is considered to have had the greatest impact during the past year. Last year, amid the Arab Spring uprising and Occupy Wall Street in the U.S., Time chose “the Protester.” The title doesn’t always come with honor, as the magazine has been known to pick those famous for notoriety, such as Adolf Hitler in 1938 and Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. This year, Time took a poll with six frontrunners, but Obama didn’t win that contest—readers chose Kim Jong-un.