TIME's Person of the Year: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

TIME's Person of the Year: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Dec 11, 2020 21:02:04 GMT

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Post by Admin on Dec 11, 2020 21:02:04 GMT

TIME has revealed its annual Person of the Year.

The 2020 Person of the Year is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, TIME unveiled Thursday night.

Biden and Harris were elected president and vice president, respectively, last month, beating incumbents Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

Every elected president has been named Person of the Year at some point during their term, but this year added the vice president to the honor because of their particularly historic win, TIME Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal said in a package introducing the winners.

Trump was named Person of the Year in 2016, and Barack Obama was named Person of the Year in 2012.

"Person of the Year is not just about the year that was, but about where we're headed, and the next four years are going to be an enormous test of them and all of us to see whether they can bring about a unity," Felsenthal said.

"This moment was one of those do-or-die moments," Biden, 78, said of the election results. "Had Trump won, I think we would have changed the nature of who we are as a country for a long time."

"We're at a moment where we will be confronted by many crises that have converged. We're talking about a public health crisis, we are in the midst of an economic crisis, a long-overdue reckoning on racial injustice, and a climate crisis," Harris, 56, added. "We got a lot of things that we need to handle, and we will multitask to address them all."

The Person of the Year is traditionally not an award, but a marker of the most significant historical figure as decided by TIME's editors. Last year's Person of the Year was Greta Thunberg, the teen climate activist from Sweden.

Other figures noted on Thursday by TIME were BTS, who were named Entertainer of the Year; LeBron James, who was named Athlete of the Year; Assa Traoré and racial-justice organizers, who were named Guardians of the Year; Zoom founder Eric Yuan, who was named Business Person of the Year; and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was named Guardian of the Year.

TIME's Person of the Year: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Dec 12, 2020 6:56:53 GMT

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Post by Admin on Dec 12, 2020 6:56:53 GMT

Everyone knows that the president of the United States lives in the White House, but did you know that the vice president lives in a different, less grandiose (but still impressive) white house? Since 1977, every person who has held the position of vice president has called the same place home: Number One Observatory Circle. And when Kamala Harris becomes the next VP in January, she'll be moving in. The house in question is a Queen Anne-style Victorian home that was built in 1893 on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.—and its history is pretty fascinating.

Originally, this house was the residence of the superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory, given that the site of the house was once the grounds of the observatory (hence the address One Observatory Circle). Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1966, Congress passed a law that established "an official residence for the vice president of the United States in the District of Columbia,” likely due to safety concerns. In 1974, the home was officially authorized for its new purpose, with Congress handling the costs of its restoration and furnishing. Prior to this authorization, vice presidents would either purchase a Washington, D.C. home or stay at nearby hotels. But it wasn’t until 1977 that a vice president actually moved into the house: Gerald Ford was supposed to be vice president for a grand total of eight years, but his time in this role was cut short following Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974. After Ford’s time as both vice president and president, Nelson Rockefeller was elected the next vice president, and he already had a nearby residence—but he did sometimes use the house at One Observatory Circle as an entertaining space.

In total, seven vice presidents have lived at 1 Observatory Circle: Walter Mondale, George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, and Mike Pence. Next month, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will soon join this list, becoming the first woman, the first Black person, and the first person of Asian descent to take on this important job. Of course, no two vice presidents are the same, so the house interiors are redecorated accordingly every four or eight years, often by interior designers, to best match the new second family’s style.