Barack Obama’s flawless campaign to win the presidency against the odds shows how America has changed, said The Times in an editorial yesterday choosing the US president-elect as the first Times Person of the Year. Excerpts:

In 2008, the American people chose as their president a man whose candidacy had seemed fantastically improbable. It caps a period of incredible change in America and makes possible incredible change in the world. And it is this — and the way he won the presidency — that made him the obvious choice as The Times Person of 2008. This year, for the first time, The Times has chosen a Person of the Year, a Briton of the Year and a Team of the Year. Our aim was to help to describe the year by identifying the individuals who made it what it was. Our selections for Briton and Team of the Year will be revealed during the coming week. Obama is not typical even as an African-American politician. And this is the second striking feature of his election. The President-elect is not the son of an African-American; he is the son of an African. He has many close relatives living in Kenya and others who were brought up there. He spent some of his childhood in Indonesia.

The holder of the world’s most powerful elected office, then, has experience and emotional ties with the developing world and this may alter how America views other nations. For Britain — whose colonial rulers tortured Obama’s grandfather — this might be some small cause for concern. Yet it is certainly in Britain’s interest for American leadership to be widely accepted and for the president-elect to be able to break down barriers to friendship with his country. Obama will be, at the least, a very different president to his immediate predecessor. He won the presidency with such politics and such a history. He wooed the Establishment, seduced the media, reassured the middle class and enthused millions of young Americans. We did not hestitate before choosing Barack Obama as the first Times Person of the Year.