Barack Obama Is 2012 Time 'Person of the Year'

Barack Obama is Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2012.

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The president, featured in profile on the cover of the silver-bordered issue, was chosen a second time around (he previously received the title in '08) for "finding and forging a new majority, for turning weakness into opportunity and for seeking, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union," says Time editor Rick Stengel.

"Obama is the first Democratic President since FDR to win more than 50 percent of the vote in consecutive elections and the first President since 1940 to win re-election with an unemployment rate north of 7.5 percent," Stengel noted in a statement. "He has stitched together a winning coalition and perhaps a governing one as well. His presidency spells the end of the Reagan realignment that had defined American politics for 30 years. We are in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes, and Obama is both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America."

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This year's Person of the Year runners-up are: Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai (No. 2); Apple CEO Tim Cook (No. 3); Egypt president Mohamed Morsi (No. 4); and Italian particle physicist Fabiola Gianotti at No. 5. They're each featured on four additional covers inside the magazine.

Obama, meanwhile, has given an interview to Time, which also published new White House photos including one of the president working on his Dec. 16 Newtown speech while attending daughter Sasha's ballet rehearsal.

"2012 may have been more satisfying a win than 2008…. I think it was easy to think that maybe 2008 was the anomaly, and I think 2012 was an indication that, no, this is not an anomaly," Obama said. "We’ve gone through a very difficult time. The American people have rightly been frustrated at the pace of change, and the economy is still struggling, and this President we elected is imperfect, and yet, despite all that, this is who we want to be. That’s a good thing."

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