Putin is Time Magazine's person of the year.(correction, Please!)(Vladimir Putin)

ITEM: Time magazine for December 20, 2007 announced its selection of Russia's head oligarch, President Vladimir Putin, as its "Person of the Year" for 2007. In "Choosing Order Before Freedom," an article explaining Time's choice penned by Richard Stengel, the magazine's managing editor, we read: "When this intense and brooding KGB agent took over as President of Russia in 2000, he found a country on the verge of becoming a failed state. With dauntless persistence, a sharp vision of what Russia should become and a sense that he embodied the spirit of Mother Russia, Putin has put his country back on the map. And he intends to redraw it himself Though he will step down as Russia's President in March, he will continue to lead his country as its Prime Minister and attempt to transform it into a new kind of nation, beholden to neither East nor West."

CORRECTION: Fairness compels us to acknowledge another statement Stengel made in his article: "Time's Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor. It is not an endorsement. It is not a popularity contest. At its best, it is a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world--for better or for worse."

It is true that Time's "Person of the Year" has not always been the leading humanitarian of the era. A history of past selections includes such butchers of humanity as Adolf Hitler in 1938, Joseph Stalin in 1939 and 1942, and Nikita Khrushchev in 1957.

The article about Hitler, Man of 1938, is worth keeping in mind as we consider what Time has just written about Putin, who shares more in common with his 1938 predecessor than today's Time editors may want to admit. The January 2, 1939 article observed:

 
   What Adolf Hitler & Co. did to 
   Germany in less than six years was 
   applauded ... ecstatically by most 
   Germans. He lifted the nation from 
   post-War defeatism. Under the swastika 
   Germany was unified. His was 
   no ordinary dictatorship, but rather 
   one of great energy and magnificent 
   planning. The "socialist" part of National 
   Socialism might be scoffed at 
   by hard-&-fast Marxists, but the Nazi 
   movement nevertheless had a mass 
   basis. The 1,500 miles of magnificent 
   highways built, schemes for cheap 
   cars and simple workers' benefits, 
   grandiose plans for rebuilding German 
   cities made Germans burst with 
   pride. Germans might eat many substitute 
   foods or wear ersatz clothes 
   but they did eat. 

An AP story of December 19 commenting about Time's selection might well have been written about Time's 1938 selection of Hitler: "Putin, 55, is enormously popular in Russia, presiding over a resurgent economy flush with revenue from oil and natural gas. But critics say he has moved away from democracy by tightening control of the courts, parliament and the media."

AP also cited the Russian government's December 19 statement that Time's recognition was seen in Russia "as an acknowledgment of Putin's role in helping Russia pull out of its social and economic troubles in the 1990s."