TIME Names German Leader Angela Merkel 'Person Of The Year'
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been named Time's Person of the Year, praised Wednesday by the magazine for her leadership on everything from Syrian refugees to the Greek debt crisis.
The magazine also cited Merkel's strong response to "Vladimir Putin's creeping theft of Ukraine'' and on its cover called her "Chancellor of the Free World.''
"Leaders are tested only when people don't want to follow," TIME Editor Nancy Gibbs said in a statement. "For asking more of her country than most politicians would dare, for standing firm against tyranny as well as expedience and for providing steadfast moral leadership in a world where it is in short supply, Angela Merkel is TIME's Person of the Year."
"What really struck us was the fact this was someone who had rose to power and had really maintained that power through a lot of caution, taking the temperature before she would do anything," international editor Brian Walsh told 1010 WINS.
Merkel, 61, is just the fourth woman since 1927 to be chosen and the first since opposition leader Corazon C. Aquino of the Philippines in 1986. She is the first German since Willy Brandt, the West German chancellor named in 1970 for "seeking to bring about a fresh relationship between East and West'' during the Cold War. In 1999, Time picked the German-born Albert Einstein as Person of the Century.
Wednesday's news came in as Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert was leading a government press conference in the German capital, while Merkel herself was at an event in Leipzig. When asked about it by The Associated Press, Seibert said he had only just received word on his phone himself.
"I'm sure the chancellor will regard this as an encouragement for her political work, for a good future for Germany as well as for Europe,'' Seibert said.
The other finalists are ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, the Black Lives Matter protest movement, Iran President Hassan Rouhani, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Caitlyn Jenner.
Following the announement, Trump tweeted "I told you (at)TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite. They picked person who is ruining Germany.''
Walsh said Trump made the shortlist because he has been "probably the single most disruptive, for better or for worse, person in the news today."
Trump might have a better chance of being named person of the year if he's elected president next year, Walsh said.
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