Informed Speculation

TIME has picked its Person of the Year – and the prize is split three ways between Bill and Melinda Gates, and – yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! – Bono, my main man!:

“If you really want to be effective, you have to bring something to the table beyond just charisma,” says Rick Santorum, a conservative Republican Senator from Pennsylvania. “The important thing is, Bono understands his issues better than 99% of members of Congress.”

Knowing the facts is crucial—”Everybody hates a dilettante,” says Bono—but so is knowing your audience. When he lunches with President Bush, as he did most recently in October, Bono quotes Scripture and talks about small projects in Africa that have specific metrics for success. Then he asks for more money to fund them. In the office of Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, he speaks of multilateralism and how development aid reminds the rest of the world of America’s greatness. Then he asks for more money. In stadiums, he tells people that if they join together, they have a chance to make poverty history. Then U2 plays One.

…More than two decades since Bono entered the world stage as a mullet-haired front man, he commands attention like no other cultural figure alive. When he visits Capitol Hill, his movement through the halls is split-timed. His lobbyists feed him tips so he knows, for instance, that Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell has a thing for Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who inspired U2′s song Walk On. The rest is intuitive. Bono arrives with no security, takes gifts (a leather-bound volume of Seamus Heaney for Patrick Leahy, a framed copy of the Marshall Plan speech for Colin Powell) to suit his host’s taste. He poses for every staff picture, and his thank-you notes are handwritten and prompt.

…Born to a Protestant mother and a Catholic father, Bono describes his faith as “promiscuous.” He quotes Scripture and counts meetings with Pope John Paul II and Billy Graham among the most significant of his life. “I try to live it rather than talk about it because there are enough secondhand-car salesmen for God,” he says. “But I cannot escape my conviction that God is interested in the progress of mankind, individually and collectively.”

Kudos to TIME for a great pick, and of course, to the man himself – I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again…this is not your everyday celebrity…read it all, needless to say…

CNN will have a special airing several times today…