Person of The Year: George W. Bush

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That was enough to keep him in the race far longer than the computer models projected, if not enough to win him the most votes. But then came the second campaign, and the way he played the endgame told us even more about him than anything he had said as a candidate. Through the five-week Florida prizefight, he showed what he meant when he kept saying he would hire the best people, give them their freedom and hold them accountable. He stood back, stayed out of the fray since law isn't his field and he knows what he doesn't know.

Even some Democrats now say privately that Bush and his soft serums may be better suited to cure the disease that afflicts the capital. With a Congress almost perfectly bisected, Republicans thirsty for power and Democrats for revenge, Bush is the one holding the needle and thread. He always said he would reach across party lines, and now he has no choice: what began as a campaign promise has become a precondition for his presidency. He must go hunting for Democrats to put in his Cabinet and for issues with broad support, in hopes that some quick successes on the easy problems will yield the capital for the harder ones.

So the first election of the new millennium is finally over, and the cast has scattered and the chads swept away, but in a few weeks the characters will all come together one last time on a plywood platform on the West Front of the Capitol: Bush, Cheney, Chief Justice Rehnquist and the rest of the court, the Gores, the Clintons, the parents Bush, the winners, losers and refugees of the strangest election in more than a century. All through the campaign, George W. Bush practiced for this moment, the very first act of a new President, when he put his hand in the air and swore to uphold the Constitution and the honor and dignity of the office, so help him God. This time it will be for real, the easiest part of the job and yet harder than he could have imagined, because while the office has at last been won, the honor remains to be earned.