Person of the Year 2008

Barack Obama


Time magazine has just released their end-of-the year issue that names their annual person of the year. Time says of their choice, “It's 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 — that even his campaign manager, at the outset, wasn't sure Obama had what it would take to win the election. He hit the American scene like a thunderclap, upended our politics, shattered decades of conventional wisdom and overcame centuries of the social pecking order.

Obama issue when his interview with Time :

On the economy:
"It is not clear that the economy's bottomed out. And so even if we take a whole host of the right steps in terms of the economy, two years from now it may not have fully recovered."

On Afghanistan:
"We're going to have to make a series of not just military but also diplomatic moves that fully enlist Pakistan as an ally in that region, that lessen tensions between India and Pakistan, and then get everybody focused on rooting out militancy in a terrain, a territory, that is very tough — and in an enormous country that is one of the poorest and least developed in the world. So that, I think, is going to be a very tough situation.

On climate:
"And then the third thing that keeps me up at night is the issue of nuclear proliferation. And then the final thing, just to round out my Happy List, is climate change. All the indicators are that this is happening faster than even the most pessimistic scientists were anticipating a couple of years ago."

Obama enjoys for cooking, basketball, spending time with his family, and dancing. Barack and Michelle Obama and children, living nearby to Michelle's mother, Marian Robinson. Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Michelle Obama, née Robinson, the wife of Barack Obama, was born on January 17, 1964 in Chicago, Illinois. She is a lawyer and was a University of Chicago Hospital Vice-President. Barack and Michelle Obama have two daughters, Malia Ann and Natasha.