Arrgghh.

This is one of the most foolish, parochial, ignorant and petty comments I have ever read on this site - and that's saying something. I personally think Putin was hands down the most important and influential figure in the world in 2007, with Gore in second place. But even if you don't think that is true, to go off an adolescent "Russia sucks" tirade is really pathetic.

This is absurd to say "Magazine picks a KGB boss turned dictator". Could you please define dictator, perhaps you are using the one that gave that label to Milosovic or to Hugo Chavez. Is this from your box of definitions where Musharaf is called a president.

Why do you engage in this stupid propaganda war against Russia? Nothing good can come from this mindless hostility but another international enemy. Do you really think it is necessary to go out looking for more enemies? Don't we have enough right now?

Putin strikes me as a bit of a thug, but less of one than our Prez, or our criminal VP.  Putin also repaid the Russian national debt far ahead of schedule, and has made his country's economy strong, although the everyday Russian hasn't noticed YET.

In our case, Bush has multiplied the national debt far ahead of anyone's wildest dreams, and the end results of his disasterous economic policies are currently still hidden. 

In terms of the "...Of The Year"  moniker, Putin, Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Rice, Lieberman... there is certainly one publication each that could name these horrible people the biggest ..asshole -or-criminal..of the year.

Jan

I just hope the Russians don't get pissed at us and refuse to give our astronauts rides up to our space station and back every time the space shuttle proves too dangerous for any sane American to fly.

Russia has had its dark and dreary "seventy years on the road to nowhere" and has retooled itself for a better future. Vladimir Putin has had a lot to do with that. The Russian people seem to admire and respect his leadership greatly. America, on the other hand, has begun to make a habit of shooting itself in the face every time the voters elect one of our politicians to any office worth mentioning.

I like what Al Gore has done with his life in recent years on the Global Warming front, but I'll never forgive him for selecting the Likud Senator Holy Joe Lieberman as his vice presidential running mate and thus blowing the Presidency in 2000. I don't normally give much of a shit what Time Magazine says about anything, but both Al Gore and Vladimir Puting deserve credit for what each has done in the past six years, each in his own way. I really don't see the point here with Reed Hunt's sour-grapes, invidious comparison of apples and oranges, so to speak.

At any rate, America now has a "government" only slightly less dysfunctional than our puppet dependencies in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, or the Baghdad Green Zone Castle. We Americans really ought to just shut up, hang our heads in humiliation, and stop braying "we're number one!" when we don't even come close any more -- unless by "number one" we mean "The Worst and the Dullest." We simply have no shame.

Re: As if Russia were going to be anywhere close to one of the top five most important countries in the world for the rest of the century. The odds are long on that.

Top five? Maybe not. But top 10, definitely. The country has enormous natural resources, and we are entering a period when resource scarcity will be common. It occupies a very large piece of real estate across the land mass of Eurasia, bordering Europe, China and MIddle East, giving it key strategic positioning relative to those regions. And it still has a very serious nuclear arsenal.

It is not difficult for me to imagine Russia being an important country long into this century. Putin is an important world figure. It is an important country now.

Our family is just back from living for a year in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, squeezed in between Russia and Turkey and bordering the Black Sea for those not familiar with the Caucasus part of the world. A friend of ours, with good contacts and sources having recently worked for a well plugged-in NGO in Tbilisi, believes based on what she is hearing that if and when Kosovo declares its independence (possibly soon) either the breakaway region of Abkhazia (NW Georgia, along the Black Sea coast) will declare itself a sovereign nation or else Russia will take it by force. (Russia has been maintaining that if Kosovo can be recognized as a sovereign nation then so should Abkhazia, which infuriates the Georgians, who consider Abkhazia part of Georgia although it has been governing itself since the post-independence Georgian civil war ended in the early 1990s.)

At any rate, if this comes to pass it will set off a round of discussion in the US media about whether this signals the beginning of a new era of Russian expansionism or is, rather, likely sui generis.

But I digress. I thought Gore should have gotten it last year and would have been a deserving recipient this year as well. But that is only if Time magazine wishes to signify some sort of moral approval or at least moral neutrality in its award of the honor.

I recall Time in 1982 or 1983, IMS, naming Reagan and Soviet premier Yuri Andropov as their People of the Year. I commented on it to my father, saying something to the effect that "these two guys between them could go a long way towards ridding the world of the nuclear threat, they are not doing that, and Time 'rewards' them by naming them its people of the year? What gives with that?"

His reply was that the award as he understood it is not supposed to be based on the moral merit of the person's contributions, just their significance, for better or worse as the case may be.

Indeed.

For me this simply makes the award less prestigious and significant.

Betcha Gore isn't sitting around playing the barstool game of who really should be Time's Man of the Year.  

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

I want to ask Mr. Reed and others on this thread one question.

Can you name one leader of a country Americans don't like, or are wary of, who is seen as anything but a mad, despotic, power hungry individual with little talent except to grab power and destroy his people? If you can't, go ahead and name your favorite (or least hated) leader from these.

Can you then compare that person to the leaders of countries that are American allies and dictatorships (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia etc.) and compare the muted response Parvez Musharraf gets to the dismissal Putin gets in this country.

I hope the exercise will help clear the fact that you are looking at these leaders from a narrow prism of American media and viewpoint.