No, not the primaries! The real contest is for Time magazine's Person of the Year, who will be revealed tomorrow.
Making the short list: Al Gore, Steve Jobs, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Condoleezza Rice, Hu Jintao, David Petraeus, Vladimir Putin, and JK Rowling.
It's a packed field, with Rowling and Gore currently leading an online survey of Time readers. But in this year of hard-boiled politics, expect a politician to stand out.
Gore, Rice and Ahmadinejad were all short-listed last year, so any of them could be due for a make-up call. But Rice has largely withdrawn from the world stage this year, and that NIE report stole all the thunder that a vote for Ahmadinejad would bring. The safe money's on Gore.
(Of course, if you insist on focusing on those upcoming primaries, we all remember who won in 2001.)
