Iranian voters
Uninsured Americans
Steve Jobs
Michelle Obama
Nancy Pelosi
The Taliban
Warren Buffett
Last evening, I sat in the audience here at Manhattan’s Time & Life Building (where Fortune is based) and watched a bunch of brainy, well-connected people help Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel decide who should be Time‘s 2009 Person of the Year. The list above belongs to Barbara Walters, who came prepared and kicked off a lively discussion. At a dinner party earlier this week, Walters explained to last night’s audience of editors and advertisers, she went around the table and asked each guest, “Who do you think will be Time‘s Person of the Year?”
So it went last evening as Stengel asked his guests the same question. Rudy Giuliani–Time‘s Person of the Year in 2001–brought his own list too. On the former New York mayor’s menu of possibilities: General David Petraeus, Derek Jeter, Rush Limbaugh, Ben Bernanke, Sonia Sotomayor, Nancy Pelosi.
Gayle King and Dr. Mehmet Oz had another idea entirely–not a person but rather, a thing: Twitter. Said King: “Twitter feels very 2009 to me.”
Maybe. Time ‘s criteria for Person of the Year is whoever or whatever most affected the events of the year, for better or for worse. So, who (or what) is your No. 1 choice for Time‘s 2009 Person of the Year?
