According to Reuters,

White House adviser Karl Rove topped the unofficial list of contenders for Time's 2004 Person of the Year, according to a panel assembled by the magazine on Tuesday to debate the question.

Along with Rove, widely credited as the architect behind President Bush's re-election, other candidates suggested by the panel included the president himself and filmmakers Mel Gibson and Michael Moore.

Time does not prepare or publish a formal list of nominees. Instead, the weekly magazine said its editors choose the person of the year after significant reporting by the staff.

The selection may well be none of the names suggested at Tuesday's panel, the editors said. The choice remains secret until it appears, this year, on the Dec. 20 issue cover.

In the meantime, the selection becomes a parlor game in America to guess who fits the criteria of "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse."

The person also must be alive, the editors said.

Another suggestion was "The Terrorist." Time has selected such entities as "The American Soldier" in 2003, the "Endangered Earth" in 1988 and "The 25 and Under Generation" in 1966.

Another proposed entity for 2004 was "The Blogosphere," the online Web log journals that helped redefine the role of the media. Other suggestions were God and the prophet Mohammed.

Gibson was proposed for directing "The Passion of the Christ," a controversial film seen by many as anti-Semitic. Moore made "Fahrenheit 9/11," a film highly critical of the Bush administration which was a huge box office hit.

The panel featured Time commentator Andrew Sullivan, NBC News anchor Brian Williams, activist Rev. Al Sharpton (news - web sites), Alessandra Stanley, television critic for The New York Times, and FBI (news - web sites) agent Coleen Rowley, one of the 2002 Persons of the Year which went to "The Whistleblowers."

The Person of the Year tradition grew out of an editorial embarrassment in 1927 when the magazine failed to put pilot Charles Lindbergh on its cover after his historical solo trans-Atlantic flight.

At the end of that year, during a slow news week, the editors decided to make him man of the year to remedy the oversight, said Eileen Naughton, president of the Time Group.

Some selections have been notoriously unpopular, such as Adolf Hitler in 1938, Joseph Stalin in 1939 and 1942 and the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.

Bush was named Person of the Year in 2000.

What's your choice?