Pelosi Finishes Last Among Today Viewers' Choice for Person of the Year

In advance of Time magazine's Person of the Year choice being revealed on Wednesday's show, NBC's Today show brought on managing editor Richard Stengel yesterday, to reveal the seven finalists, and on Tuesday's show NBC's Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira gave the results of an on-line poll of their viewer's picks and it wasn't good news for Nancy Pelosi. The Speaker of the House finished dead last among the seven candidates but Lauer pitied Pelosi as he cheered on: "C'mon Nancy you can do better."

The following exchange was aired on the December 15 Today show:

MEREDITH VIEIRA: So who had the biggest impact on 2009? We're gonna reveal Time magazine's Person of the Year, live tomorrow on Today.

MATT LAUER: We gave you the seven contenders on Monday, and asked you to weigh in on-line. Here are the results as you can see. Steve Jobs leading the way with 49 percent. President Obama in second with 20 percent, followed by General Stanley McChrystal with 11 percent. The rest of the top seven are there.

(Graphic shows Usain Bolt at 10 percent, Chinese workers at 5.7 percent, Ben Bernanke at 3.3 percent, Nancy Pelosi last at 1.8 percent)

VIEIRA: Yeah my Ben Bernanke there, is way down at the bottom there.

LAUER: Uh huh. Nancy Pelosi with 1.8 percent. C'mon Nancy you can do better.

VIEIRA: It's interesting Jobs, I guess, because everybody, almost everybody has an iPhone or an iPod so they might think of him, you know, pretty much every day.

LAUER: He was recently named CEO of the Decade.

-Geoffrey Dickens is the senior news analyst at the Media Research Center.