TIME managing editor Richard Stengel just couldn't bring himself to pick runner-up Al Gore -- "the kind of leader these times require" -- or TIME readers' No. 1 online poll favorite, J.K. Rowling. When it came down to the decision, TIME selected Vladimir Putin as Person of the Year 2007.
Part of TIME's reasoning:
It is ultimately about leadership—bold, earth-changing leadership. Putin is not a boy scout. He is not a democrat in any way that the West would define it. He is not a paragon of free speech. He stands, above all, for stability—stability before freedom, stability before choice...I'm sure Stengel's final answer pleases Pootie Poot's psychic friends connection at the Bush WH.
[That's all. No more after the break.]
