In 2008 the American people chose as their president a man whose candidacy had seemed fantastically improbable. Yet it was not the first time, by any means, that they had done such a thing. Less than three years before winning the presidency Jimmy Carter appeared as Governor of Georgia on the television show What’s My Line? as a mystery guest. The panel failed to recognise him. Barack Obama is an unlikely president, but he is not the only one there has been.

In 2008 the American people also chose as their president a man with an extraordinary life story, whose background contained little that suggested that one day he would hold such high office. It was not the first time they had done that, either. In fact, American politics has long been dominated by individuals with an inspiring tale to tell. Presidents commonly weave their own story of triumph over adversity into the narrative of their campaigns. Barack Obama did this too, but compared to some others he made modest use of the technique.

What, then, made Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency so remarkable, such a landmark event, is not the fact of his improbability or of his extraordinary background. What made it landmark is the nature of those things. For unlike his predecessors, Mr Obama’s improbability, Mr Obama's extraordinary background, is not just important to him and to the story of his personal triumph. 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.

Three things in the story of Mr Obama’s rise are particularly striking. The first is the most widely remarked upon – Mr Obama is an African-American. He won the presidency as the candidate of a party that little more than 40 years ago was fielding openly racist candidates.

Even on election day there were pundits who believed that Americans would not elect a black president. Mr Obama proved these pessimists wrong. From the beginning he handled the race question brilliantly.

Mr Obama is not, however, typical even as an African-American politician. And this is the second striking feature of his election. The Presi-dent-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 Mr 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.

Mr Obama is also unusual among modern presidents in coming from the Northern urban Left. Mr 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.