SELECT YOUR VOTE

Tevi Troy: Tiger Woods. During a period of war, recession, and huge proposals to reshape our health, energy, and financial sectors, Tiger’s meltdown showed that Americans are less interested in policy than they are with celebrity, prosperity, and infidelity.

Fred Barbash:  

Who’s your person of the year?(opinion)

>>Fred Barbash: To name your own person of the year, sign in here.

Lanny Davis: My "Person of the Year":

My newest grand-child (that makes six!), Gabriel Frances Davis, born December 7, 2009 — son of Seth Davis and Melissa Cohen Davis. Gabriel re-confirmed the Covenant Abraham made with God 5,000+ years ago and allowed the Mohel to make the magic cut.

I say the pain Gabriel went through to keep the Covenant is a lot less than the pain that the American people suffered under Mr. Bernanke watch.

–Grand-Pa Lanny Davis, who was in the bathroom at the magic moment when the Mohel performed The Deed, with eyes called and ears covered.

Rory Cooper: Tea Party Taxpayers: The Person of the year must be the persons who gave a voice to individual taxpayers in 2009. No one group was more influential in politics, policy and organizing than these regular Americans who organized themselves from the bottom up, largely on Twitter and social networking sites. What started as a movement against government largesse and spending on Tax Day was transformed into a movement about government-wide abuses, including the health care reform legislation that would increase premiums, taxes, drive down quality and still leave millions uninsured. They are so threatening to the liberal establishment that cable anchors and otherwise respectable pundits used vulgar sexual innuendos to try and tarnish them. Never mind that the “Tea Party” phrase was born from our founding fathers, the patriot Samuel Adams and our constitutional first principles. In fact, whereas almost every network camera in America would be pointed at a radical WTO/IMF protest, or Copenhagen violence, only one network even legitimately covered the peaceful demonstrations this year, and others only focused on the one or two persons with the sign that was clearly out of place. Time Magazine was so willing to ignore them that they chose “The Chinese Worker” as a finalist instead.

Brian Katulis: The man of the year in 2009 is Mullah Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban.

Time’s Man of the Year award goes to the person or idea that "for better or for worse has most influenced events in the preceding year," and previous awardees have included Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Ben Bernanke is such an obvious choice given the economic crisis, so I’m going with Mullah Omar, a man born into a poor family in rural Afghanistan. For someone with such little formal education, he and his Taliban henchmen have just duped the Obama administration and most members of the U.S. Congress into sending even more troops and taxpayer money to Afghanistan.

Mullah Omar has staged a surprising comeback since going into hiding after the initial invasion in 2001. His greatest coup this year was hoodwinking the United States and some its allies into sending thousands of more troops and hundreds of billions more dollars to fight in Afghanistan - even though he and his inner core of advisors are quite likely across the border in Pakistan. Pakistan is here the real combustible mix of national security threats exists, yet we’ve not developed a compelling approach to deal with those threats there.
 Even if Mullah Omar is captured or killed, he has just helped set into motion a series of events that will probably lead to greater stability in Afghanistan, but at a huge costs, including more borrowed money and opportunity costs for America’s overall national security. We’ve just committed to a program with big pricetag to stabilize a place that likely poses the same level of threats that Yemen and Somalia does today. Mullah Omar’s an odious individual, but he punches above his weight, and his actions have helped shape the course of the next few years.

Bradley A. Smith: The Tea Partiers
Maligned by all the "right thinking" people, denounced by Democrats and liberals as ignorant and racist, abandoned by much of the conservative intelligentsia, these ordinary Americans persevered, devoting their personal time, standing in the cold and rain, to stand up against the massive government power grab now underway. In doing so, they gave the Republican Party courage enough to offer at least some reasonable resistence to the statist juggernaut, and they reminded America of its better part: the part that yearns for freedom; that despises the crony capitalism of the current administration; that seeks only to be left alone rather than to rule; that is law abiding and peaceful even when the Administration is full of tax cheats; that maintains its decency and manners even as the high-browed, ruling class falsely accuses it of fomenting violence and hatred.

These people represent America at its best, dedicated, involved, and prepared to defend their freedoms from the arrogance of power in the face of unending ridicule and overwhelming odds. These are the descendents of the people who won American independence. Those who mock them would most assuredly have been Tories.

To the Tea Partiers: Men and Women of the Year.

Edward Alden: My Person of the Year is Carie Lemack. Her mother, Judy Laroque, was aboard American Airlines Flight 11 when the hijackers crashed that plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Ms. Lemack, a Stanford MBA who also holds a Master’s in public administration from Harvard, went on to become a founder of the Families of September 11, which was a critical voice in demanding a full public inquiry into the attacks. As we all know, the result was the 9/11 Commission, the most thorough and responsible investigation of a major policy failure in the history of the United States.

Now, rather than resting on that accomplishment, she has embarked on an even tougher challenge — to try to unite victims of terrorism around the world in an effort to discredit violent extremists by giving voice to the many who have suffered at their hands. She has established a group call the Global Survivors Network (www.globalsn.net) that aims "to show the world, and especially those who may be sympathetic to terrorists’ grievances, that violence is not an acceptable answer and can only cause pain and suffering, most often to people just like them."

The group held its first event last month in Amman, Jordan with survivors and family members of those killed and injured in coordinated terrorist bombings of four hotels on November 9, 2005. Further events are planned next year in Indonesia and Pakistan.

The struggle against extremism will ultimately be won only by discrediting, in the eyes of their own people, those who glorify violence in the name of higher causes. By uniting the innocent victims of terrorist violence and telling their forgotten stories, Carie Lemack is leading that struggle. That is why she is my Person of the Year.

Timothy Stoltzfus Jost: Senator Harry Reid, who despite considerable political risk to himself, and despite having to continually with senators who cannot look beyond petty party politics, the demands of special interests, or their own little egos to the nation’s needs, has continued patiently but inexorably to herd the Senate toward the successful enactment of health care reform legislation, perhaps yet as a Christmas present to the nation’s unemployed, poor, and uninsured.

Dana Perino: Persons of the year:

Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rep. John Boehner - for leading the Republicans in a strong and gracious way by arguing on the merits about every issue, especially healthcare, uniting the Republican Members of Congress to be a loyal opposition, never losing their cool even when provoked by the Democrats, and driving Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi absolutely crazy. Hear hear!

Bradley A. Blakeman: My person of the year is Senator Joe Lieberman. Here is a guy who was tossed out of his own party, which gave him the opportunity and freedom to rise as one of the few statesmen of the United States Senate. Although I do not agree on every issue the Senator does, he is someone who is principled in his beliefs. There is none stronger on national defense and keeping our country safe and he has led on health care to date to the chagrin of Democrats and to the cheers of a majority of Americans.

Dean Baker: The person of the year is definitely Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. (This is in the Time Magazine spirit of most influential person for good or evil.) Mr. Blankfein personifies the arrogance of the Wall Street crowd. He runs a company that is handing billions of dollars in bonuses to its top executives at the same time that it is on the government dole. When challenged about Goldman’s behavior, he insisted that the company is doing "God’s work." While Goldman has repaid its TARP money, it is still benefiting from $28 billion in FDIC guaranteed loans. Even more importantly, it is benefiting from "too big to fail" insurance. No one thinks that the government would allow Goldman to fail if its bets when bad and threatened its survival. This means that Goldman can borrow at much lower cost than if it had to rely only on its own creditworthiness, like other businesses. It take an extraordinary person to characterize this pilfering from the American public as "God’s work." Mr. Blankfein deserves some serious recognition.

Darrell M. West: Ben Bernanke is the Person of the Year. Who else was more important in saving us from a global depression? Amidst 10 percent unemployment, we forget how close our financial system came to melting down completely. Those who are unhappy with the Fed Chief forget how instrumental his actions last Fall and into the Spring in stopping the meltdown and laying the groundwork for what now is the end of the recession.

This Just In: Times Person of the Year

Martin Frost: Nancy Pelosi. She has shown more real leadership than anyone in government.

Fred Barbash: I gave Arena contributors the opportunity to comment on this story by Anne Schroeder Mullins about Sen. Schumer: Schumer has a flight to forget

>>Dana Perino: Doesn’t that make you feel proud?