As manufactured non-news events go, they don't come much bigger than Time's annual Person of the Year luncheon. Yesterday, indicted former House Majority Leader Tom Delay, NBC anchor Brian Williams, blog queen Arianna Huffington, actor Emilio Estevez, and Newark mayor Cory Booker convened at the Time-Life Building to discuss who, for better, or worse, most affected Americans' lives in 2006.

Not that anything they said mattered much—Time's editors are already well along in their deliberations, though the final determination hasn't been made, according to managing editor Rick Stengel. "We have some trains that are in motion already, which is not to say we couldn't switch to someone else quite quickly," he said during the cocktail hour. One possibility, according to a pair of Stengel's deputies: a concept cover about the "Axis of Incompetence" comprising George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. Good luck getting them to pose for the photo.

DeLay also thought Rumsfeld deserved consideration—not for the way he screwed up the Iraq War, but for the way he nobly fell on his sword for the administration. The ex-Congressman added that he had several other suggestions. "One of 'em's [incoming House speaker] Nancy Pelosi," he told Radar. "What she's going to do to America I think is just awful, but it's going to be massive, and I think she deserves consideration."

Huffington was equally partisan in her nomination. "I think it should be Jack Murtha on the grounds that he changed the debate about Iraq a year ago. He was the first hawk with close ties to the military to say, 'I was wrong, the war is wrong, there can be no victory in Iraq, let's bring the troops home.'"

Asked for a non-political selection, Huffington said, "How about Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas? Fergie's music is so appalling and yet so haunting. I think 'My Humps' should be against the Geneva Convention. It's torture. It stays in your head and you can't get it out."

Estevez, who spent a surprisingly large portion of the reception chatting with DeLay, was decidedly more earnest. His Person of the Year pick: "All of us. I think that we need to examine our global village, and I think we are a global village now more than ever. And I truly do, I believe that."

And what had he and DeLay talked about? "He and I discussed the right to bear arms in Texas, and the right to carry a concealed weapon. Which is interesting in the context of the movie I have coming out. You know, Bobby Kennedy was killed by a handgun." (Estevez wrote and directed Bobby, about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.)

Despite his interest in politics, Estevez said he would never run for office. "No, I'm not suited for that. I'm not built that way. My father [Martin Sheen] gets asked that all the time."

Does his brother, Charlie Sheen, ever get asked?

"Probably not," he said—noting, however, that the younger Sheen did have one built-in advantage as a candidate: "All of his dirty laundry has already been aired."