Editor's Note: Selecting our Person of the Year is always a difficult process that sparks spirited discussions among our staff. Read the entire Person of the Year package, including articles about two runners-up. We invite you to add your comments on our choices at the end of each article.

Robert Gates sits at the table, sandwiched in the cathedral-like hearing room between an antsy Senate Armed Services Committee and an anxious public. It's December 2006 and if the Code Pink Iraq war protesters in the public seating are not providing enough volatility, the grim Senate panel in front of Gates is still reeling from an historic congressional election the month before, as well as the sudden firing of the larger-than-life man he has been tapped to replace.

After years of obfuscation and antipathy from Donald Rumsfeld, Sen. Carl Levin (Mich.), the committee's ranking Democrat and soon-to-be chairman, simply wants to know whether President George W. Bush's new pick to run the Pentagon believes the U.S. is winning the war in Iraq.

"No, sir," he answers. With those two words, Gates signaled that the era of Rumsfeld's ideology dictating Pentagon decisions was over.

Fast forward nearly two years. Defense Secretary Robert Michael Gates is standing on a stage in Chicago with President-elect Barack Obama. The reform-minded Democrat is announcing his decision to keep the Republican as Defense secretary - marking the first time that a newly elected chief executive would retain the existing Pentagon chief for his Cabinet - let alone during a White House transition between opposing political parties.

In a short speech, the 65-year-old Kansas native explains his decision to stay in a direct fashion: "Mindful that we are engaged in two wars and face other serious challenges at home and around the world, and with a profound sense of personal responsibility to and for our men and women in uniform and their families, I must do my duty - as they do theirs. How could I do otherwise?"

Gates was not in government when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, nor was he the architect of the Bush administration's surge strategy, though he became its chief advocate on Capitol Hill. Republican presidential contender Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) closely identified himself with both the strategy and Gates. Some antiwar proponents were skeptical that Gates would implement Obamas vision to reduce forces in Iraq.

"That was the only thing I was worried about," says Rep. Norm Dicks, the Washington state Democrat who describes himself as "more bullish" on getting out of Iraq. "But they must have worked it out or else Gates wouldn't have accepted and Obama wouldn't have offered."

Gates has not made whole a stressed and strained military, and there still are many key issues to tackle. But his respect for collaborative decision-making among government institutions could make the case for his singularly outstanding impact on aerospace last year. Gates has focused on the simple idea, albeit a complex task, of getting the job done. This grounded purpose has been long needed in a Washington polariz2ed by political disagreement over the use of military power abroad and the struggle to reinvigorate strained alliances. Gates's pragmatism is rippling through many facets of U.S. policy and helping to repair damaged relations with Congress, the State Dept. and the global aerospace industry. This is why he is Aviation Week's Person of the Year for 2008.

But it would be a mistake to see Gates only as a mild-mannered consensus-builder. Though one of his goals has been to repair relations between the Pentagon's civilian leadership and its top military officers, he is not afraid of citing officers accountable for errors. He sacked the Army secretary over scandalous lapses at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and fired top civilian and military leadership of the Air Force for embarrassing slipups in the transport of nuclear weapons. Gates has also challenged NATO allies to send more manpower, equipment and funding to Afghanistan and asked Congress to increase funding for State Dept. reconstruction and nation-building efforts - even if it meant taking money away from the Pentagon.