As far as I can tell, he won for…beating John F. Kerry and winning the Presidency again. And “reshaping the rules of politics,” which I suppose is true – although if I decipher that to mean “made it okay to play dirty because it works,” Karl Rove should really be the one getting the honor.
But to receive it “for persuading a majority of voters this time around that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years”? If that’s a criterion for winning Man of the Year, shouldn’t every president-elect receive the nomination? (I did enjoy the bit of vague wording in “…this time around…”, but.)
For the record, he’s the 12th person ever to receive the appellation more than once, and the 8th president to do so.
Also, there’s kind of a weak field this year. US presidents tend to get it by default if there are no other strong candidates, especially if they’ve just won an election.
There is an article on Wikipedia on the Man of the Year. The writer(s) of the article say that there had been something like three bin Laden coves in two months, and quite possibly that TIME wimped out and went with the choice that would be less likely to piss off subscribers and advertisers.
There was a previous thread here on the 2001 award, but I think it was lost in the Winter of our Missed Content. As I recall it was basically acknowledged that Time’s board had chickened out of giving it to OBL. I’ve never been able to take the award seriously since (and it’s not like it really meant that much beforehand anyway).
What has Bush done in the last year that has been significant? Iraq is a continuation of '03 same with Afghanistan. He came out in support of a constitional admendment on an important social issue but everyone knew that the amendment was DOA. The main thing he did this last year was run an effective campaign to discredit Kerry hardly a Man of the Year accomplishment.
At this point, Bush can be the person affecting the world the most, just on sheer momentum. He will continue to mess up Iraq; the climate will continue to get warmer, and we’ll continue to do nothing about it; the budget and trade deficits will continue to be enormous; the dollar will continue to plunge, relative to other currencies; and our economy will have a good chance of losing the privileged status that comes with being the world’s reserve currency. That’s what his election win means, and that’s why he should be MoY for 2004.
And that’s assuming the Dems become a genuinely effective opposition party, and are frequently able to talk some of the remaining moderate Republicans over to their side on various votes: that’s why I haven’t mentioned things like Social Security, tax deform, or the future of the Supreme Court.
He’s screwed up the nation’s economy, got the rest of the world to loathe the US, and brought us into an unecessary, costly war … and yet he still managed to grab 51% of the electorate. That’s a pretty big fucking accomplishment.
Although i blame this more on Democratic incompetentcy rather than Bush’s prowess.
They did wuss out, big time. I think the impending, or recently-completed, AOL/Time-Warmer merger had something to do with it as well. It was a bad joke.
The award is basically Newsmaker of the Year, and as much as I was pulling for Jon Stewart, Bush winning does make sense.
Just to address this part of your post, it’s actually very common for a president-elect to be Man of the Year. When it’s a new president, he almost always is Man of the Year. When it’s a reelected president, he becomes Man of the Year about half the time. So it’s by no means unprecedented.