Hillary Clinton honors Angela Merkel being named TIME's Person of the Year

[tammywammy]

45. That's not what it says.

She said that Time Person of the Year tends to go to someone with institutional power. They didn't pick Merkel because she's a woman, but because she's a powerful person. Merkel is a powerful person that happens to be a woman.

"Or the Chancellery," Jones continues. "In naming Angela Merkel this year’s Person, we’re not actually breaking with tradition. The chancellor of Germany is the de facto leader of a continent and steward of the world’s fourth biggest economy. Merkel has been in office for a decade, emerging as a principled manager and a resolute diplomat."

But why Merkel?

Largely because of her choice to take in one million refugees.

"At a moment when much of the world is once more engaged in a furious debate about the balance between safety and freedom, the Chancellor is asking a great deal of the German people, and by their example, the rest of us as well," TIME's Nancy Gibbs explains.