Year of the Survivor

By Walter Isaacson, Managing Editor

Before the November election produced constitutional contortions unseen since 1876, we were considering a variety of candidates for Person of the Year. We have often chosen a new President-elect, but not always: neither John F. Kennedy nor Richard Nixon was selected the year he won.

But as the postelection turmoil escalated, it became clear that it was the story of the year and more: whoever was the survivor would be not only the next President but a symbol of a historic showdown that would be remembered and cited a century hence. So by early last week, without knowing whether Al Gore or George Bush would win, we'd decided that the victor would be Person of the Year.

For 74 years that distinction has gone to the person who (or, in two cases, the object that), for better or for worse, most affected the news and personified what was important about the year. Even had he won a simpler election, Bush would have been a strong contender. He remade and united the Republican Party and defeated a talented Vice President who had the wind at his back after eight years of wallet-popping prosperity. Bush's amiable demeanor tapped into a desire to end years of meaningless partisan rancor. Yet he was also controversial: he became the first President-elect to lose the popular vote since 1888, partly due to skepticism about one half or the other of his "compassionate conservative" duality and partly due to doubts among some that he had enough experience or heft for the job. By his narrow and contested victory, he became a symbol of an electorate that was not (as some have contended) deeply ideologically divided but was instead rather conflicted and ambivalent as it split the difference between the two parties.

When we first approached Bush after his certification following the initial recounts, he was willing to cooperate partly because he felt that appearing as TIME's Person of the Year on the very day that the Electoral College voted could help certify the end of the postelection conflict. He invited us to Austin, Texas, for a photo session, a two-hour interview the next day, and then a visit to his isolated ranch on the Saturday when the Supreme Court happened to stay the Florida recount.

Having observed and occasionally spoken to both Gore and Bush during this postelection flurry, I was struck that the way they handled this period showed again how different they are, though each admirable in his own way. Gore masters the details; when talking about the contest, he would refer to facts and stories he'd downloaded onto his Blackberry pocket e-mail device. Bush is impatient with distracting details, just as he is with the cedar undergrowth on his ranch, which he clears with a vengeance because it distracts his view of the big picture. Gore personally managed his legal strategy and wrote his own statements on his laptop. Bush delegates with abandon; during our hours at the ranch, while his lead was slipping in the hand counts, he neither turned on the news nor checked in with his aides. When called with word of the Supreme Court stay, he chatted for only a few minutes and didn't even ask which Justices had ruled his way.

Talking to Gore, you sense how more at ease he is engaging with ideas than with people; the passion of his analysis drove him to challenge a result based on uncounted ballots, and I think the criticism and impatience he faced was unfair. Bush becomes tentative or disengaged when a conversation turns too analytic, but riding around the ranch, he displayed his personable ability to tell stories that gave insight into someone's character, listen, pick up emotional cues and establish casual bonds.

It made me recall my first campaign, when I rode as a junior reporter with Ronald Reagan on his plane in 1980, listening as he amiably told tales of old Hollywood characters. He was secure in his big-picture vision yet completely disengaged when it came to policy details. And I also remembered first meeting Bill Clinton, back when he was a Governor, and being struck by his insatiable appetite both for emotional connections and for the intricacies of policy concepts.

All of which reminded me how hard it is to tell which qualities will make a great President, or a flawed one, or both. The magic of our democratic system, which again proved resilient during this wildest of all test rides, is that it often produces a President well suited for his times. Perhaps the close split in this election and in the new Congress might, ironically, make it easier for someone like Bush to succeed. We are about to find out, for better or for worse, whether his personable approach will help us clear away the rancorous undergrowth and create that wider expanse of common ground he claims to envision.