Don’t try to join all the different metaphors in this Shelby Steele column, but it’s very much worth reading. A few excerpts:
Mr. Obama won the presidency by achieving a symbiotic bond with the American people: He would labor not to show himself, and Americans would labor not to see him. As providence would have it, this was a very effective symbiosis politically. And yet, without self-disclosure on the one hand or cross-examination on the other, Mr. Obama became arguably the least known man ever to step into the American presidency. . . .
I think that Mr. Obama is not just inexperienced; he is also hampered by a distinct inner emptiness—not an emptiness that comes from stupidity or a lack of ability but an emptiness that has been actually nurtured and developed as an adaptation to the political world. . . .
He has not had to gamble his popularity on his principles, and it is impossible to know one’s true beliefs without this. In the future he may stumble now and then into a right action, but there is no hard-earned center to the man out of which he might truly lead. . . .
I’m not going to exert the effort required to search for all the posts, back in 2007 and early 2008, where I observed that Obama was an empty suit. But I thought it and said it quite frequently. I’ve admired Steele for a long time, but, obviously, Steele’s column neither proves nor disproves my point. Still, I’m extremely pleased to see that a year into the Obama administration, Steele and I are on the same wavelength. If I’m right, I’m right. But if I’m wrong, I’m hard pressed to think of better company.