Time's Person of the Year: Al Gore

I worked at Time for seven years and listened to a lot of handwringing debates about who should be the Person of the Year. It doesn't sell as well as the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue but it's still the biggest event in publishing each year. I think it should and will be Al Gore. My colleague Jeff Bercovici says he's the frontrunner. My money's on him too. Last year's "You", was a concept choice. So this year, I think they go with a person. Petraeus and Iraq are too much of a downer and it's not clear where the war is heading. Musharraf is a possibility but it guarantees low newstand sales. Al Gore's won every honor this year from an Emmy to the Nobel so this seems like the perfect coda. Plus you can make a pretty strong case that no single person is having as much influence on an important issue of the time. I have no inside info, but Time's been outfront on environmental coverage under Jim Kelly, the previous managing editor, and Rick Stengel who had a cover on Gore earlier this year.

That said, since Gore's not exactly hurting for accolades, maybe it's seen as stale. I think if you go through the other possibilities: Sarkozy (too early), Bush (too irrelevant), Ahmadinjead (too much of a crank). The other possibility is a China play....Haven't seen much in the mag from great China hand Bill Powell so is he working on something? I'd put money on one of the China Billionaires rather than a crotchety Communist leader. But China's not the newest story either. Here's my longshot: India Some "India Rising" figure epitomized one of the Mittal steel barons....Plus, India lets you talk about nukes and Pakistan.