I find the whole concept of "Person of the Year" pretty silly. And usually pretty predictable too. It's a scheduled PR excercise that our political culture goes through once a year in order to reinforce its sense of its own moral grandeur, and that's about as far as it goes. It's no surprise that Obama got it. It's kind of like it would be giving it to Julius Caesar (or one of his successors) if we were living back in the days of Rome.

A standard exercise. Matter of fact, they did do stuff like this in Rome periodically in order to further exalt their leaders.