Time has named President Barack Obama as the
"Person of the Year" in the magazine's yearly selection.
Time:
Twenty-seven years after driving from New York City to Chicago in a
$2,000 Honda Civic for a job that probably wouldn’t amount to much,
Barack Obama, in better shape but with grayer hair, stood in the
presidential suite on the top floor of the Fairmont Millennium Park
hotel as flat screens announced his re-election as President of the
United States. The networks called Ohio earlier than predicted, so his
aides had to hightail it down the hall to join his family and friends.
They encountered a room of high fives and fist pumps, hugs and relief....
...Two years ago, Republicans liked to say that the only hard thing Obama
ever did right was beating Hillary Clinton in the primary, and in
electoral terms, there was some truth to that. In 2012 the GOP hoped to
cast him as an inspiring guy who was not up to the job. But now we know
the difference between the wish and the thing, the hype and the man in
the office. He stands somewhat shorter, having won 4 million fewer votes
and two fewer states than in 2008. But his 5 million-vote margin of
victory out of 129 million ballots cast shocked experts in both parties,
and it probably would have been higher had so much of New York and New
Jersey not stayed home after Hurricane Sandy. He won many of the
toughest battlegrounds walking away: Virginia by 4 points, Colorado by 5
and the lily white states of Iowa and New Hampshire by 6. He untied
Ohio’s knotty heartland politics, picked the Republican lock on Florida
Cubans and won Paul Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wis. (Those last two
data points especially caught the President’s interest.) He will take
the oath on Jan. 20 as the first Democrat in more than 75 years to get a
majority of the popular vote twice. Only five other Presidents have
done that in all of U.S. history.
There are many reasons for this, but the biggest by far are the nation’s
changing demographics and Obama’s unique ability to capitalize on them.
When his name is on the ballot, the next America — a younger, more
diverse America — turns out at the polls. In 2008, blacks voted at the
same rate as whites for the first time in history, and Latinos broke
turnout records. The early numbers suggest that both groups did it again
in 2012, even in nonbattleground states, where the Obama forces were
far less organized. When minorities vote, that means young people do
too, because the next America is far more diverse than the last. And
when all that happens, Obama wins. He got 71% of Latinos, 93% of blacks,
73% of Asians and 60% of those under 30....
I agree. The country is changing. The old white men of the Republican Party are still trying to figure out how they lost the support of women, young people, the middle class, and various ethnic groups. I think it is best that we don't tell the GOP why so that their party can just wither away.
Time also has some photos of the President taken by Pete Souza:
Here.
**** Anyone that suggests that teachers should be armed with weapons in the classroom obviously has never been in a classroom. Teachers are paid to teach, and provide the tools for learning. Carrying a gun in school will not help stop these shootings. Laws, and restricting access to assault weapons, increased funding for PTSD and mental health treatment, will end this bloodshed.