Time names Obama as ’Person of the Year’

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

refid:10591096 ilişkili resim dosyası

"For having the confidence to sketch an ambitious future in a gloomy hour, and for showing the competence that makes Americans hopeful he might pull it off, the president-elect is TIME's Person of the Year," the newsweekly said, reported Agence France-Presse.

Time told readers it was "unlikely that you were surprised to see Obama's face on the cover". "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. He hit the American scene like a thunderclap, upended our politics, shattered decades of conventional wisdom and overcame centuries of the social pecking order," the newsweekly added.

It said U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was first runner-up followed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and China's Zhang Yimou, who directed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Recent winners have included Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the American soldier and the online public. Time began selecting a "Man of the Year" in 1927 and has selected a man, woman or group every year since. In one year it chose the computer for the title.

Meanwhile, incoming U.S. president named the head of the Chicago school system as education secretary on late Tuesday and declared that failing to improve classroom instruction is "morally unacceptable for our children."

Flexible and practical
His choice, Arne Duncan, a longtime friend of Obama and a former professional basketball player in Australia who has a reputation as a reformer, called education "the civil rights issue of our generation."

Duncan would take over a sprawling department that has focused during the Bush administration in winning passage and then implementing the president's signature education program, which focuses on measuring performance through standardized testing.

Obama praised Duncan for being flexible and practical as the Chicago press conference at a school that he said has made remarkable progress under Duncan's leadership. Duncan has run the third-biggest U.S. school district since 2001, pushing to boost teacher quality and to improve struggling schools and closing those that fail.