I'm Nancy Gibbs, I'm the Managing Editor of TIME and the person of the year for 2013
is Pope Francis [MUSIC]
I'm here with Radhika Jones the Deputy Managing Editor who
ran the whole POY
process so Radhika why the Pope? The Pope came on to the scene in March
with this kind of almost it was like fanfare and also the opposite a fanfare
he immediately made his presence felt in a way that that
seemed different from from Popes in recent memory.
He's now head of the Catholic Church 1.2 billion-strong
followers and the largest ongoing historical institution in the world so
he's in a position of immense power.
But he introduced himself as a man of great humility
even in a very short amount of time he's only been Pope for 9 months. He really has refocused a
conversation that's global
putting more emphasis on poverty and the poor putting emphasis on
inequality of wealth these are conversations that that we've been
having as a nation
that we've been having globally but without really an international figure
to preside over them. The pope has put himself in the position of being that figure.
[crowd noise]
How would you compare
him as a leader to the other leaders on the scene? He obviously
has less power and some literal sense he doesn't have
armies to deploy and yet his leadership seems like it has really as you say
captured people's imagination. Well one thing that we often talk about a person of the year
is that balance between institutional power and individual power
and in this case you have a man with with nominal
power but someone who's using it in ways but feel almost like
a grassroots initiative. We had many many conversations
about an interesting other man with a mission
who also came out of nowhere this year and that is Edward Snowden.
Edward Snowden a 29-year-old contractor
working with the National Security Agency suddenly
left his job flew to Hong Kong and revealed himself as the sources of major leaks from
the NSA and he
like the pope having disrupted the system has also continued to
to provide us with news over the past six months. You know, one of the things
that we love about putting this issue together is that as much as it's about
the choice and the person appears on the cover
we also want to put together magazine and
a package online that really captures the whole year and all of the
major news stories that happen and I would say that the story generated by
Edward Snowden
that of surveillance by the NSA and in general the concept of
digital surveillance and how that
security that comes from that intersects with personal privacy
that was a huge story this year.
Another figure that, also I think many of us would not have
recognized or imagined would be on the short list this year just a year ago
is the freshman senator from Texas Ted Cruz
[Crowd Noise]
Ted Cruz is a fascinating figure on this list and
in away he represents what didn't happen
this year in American government which is a lot of
lawmaking. I think it was the least effective congress in terms of bills
passed
in recorded history. Ted Cruz
is an incredibly fractious politician he instigated
the initiative to defund Obamacare that eventually led to the government
shutdown for 16 days.
Which some would argue really hurt the Republican brand.
Many would argue it really hurt Ted Cruz but if you talk to Ted Cruz about it he would say that
fallout from the shutdown has only made him a stronger force.
One name on the list who is not really a divisive figure of hero or villain
would be Syrian President Bashar Assad.
It was a particularly bad year in Syria. The Civil War has been going on for
a couple years
death toll has risen to a hundred thousand. There are now than
two million Syrian refugees and of course this summer saw the alleged use
by
the Assad regime of chemical weapons to kill not only adults but also
about 400 children something that really touched
the world and and suggested and to President Obama
among others that America and other countries should intervene
that didn't happen he's still there still
exercising a whole lot of power and still flummoxing leaders in the west
In terms of how to effect any change in regime
and he's a major player in the politics of the region which remains a real hot spot
globally.
And then the last person on our short list may be as surprised as anyone to find
herself there and it's Edith Windsor. We really wanted to capture this
shift that I think we've all seen happen in the United States over the past
year
to do with gay rights and gay marriage in particular. Edith Windsor's case
came before the Supreme Court this year and her victory resulted in the
overturning of DOMA the Defense of Marriage Act
which discriminated against gay
marriages in states where those marriages had been legal.
She's 84 years old. She was fighting
for the right to spousal benefits after her
spouse had died and in the time since that verdict came down she has become a real
icon of the gay rights movement and has really embraced that role it's wonderful
to see and
wonderful to read about.