An empty suit is an illusion

Throughout last year's epic presidential campaign, a number of my Republican-oriented friends kept repeating a curious mantra: "Obama is an empty suit."

Their upshot, I believe, was that Senor Obama lacked the resume of accomplishment and life experience of his competitors. Moreover, the implication was that he was all talk and no walk. Obama lacked the necessary qualifications to be president. He was a cardboard cutout. A front, perhaps.

These same folks never seemed to "get" Obama. Despite the obvious signs that something was afoot (consistently huge and rapturous campaign crowds, devoted droves of passionate volunteers, C-150 loads of donations) he was dismissed as a greenhorn or naive poseur. All talk. And no details (never mind the mind-boggling policy recommendations that filled his campaign website).

Despite their best efforts, my right-wing friends have their Empty Suit President. Only now, it's become apparent that the "ideology" they backed is The Empty Suit. The Republican brand is so wrung out that only a circus contortionist can fit its cut of cloth.

Meanwhile, our president continues to astound with a near daily dose of political audacity. Obama had so many people invoking Lincoln before his Inauguration. Wrong-O. At this point, he is synthesizing FDR and LBJ with his dramatic introductions of nation-changing proposals. Anyone paying attention to his prime-time press conference, his economic "summits" and the Non-State-of-the-Union address understand that this is a president like no other we have seen.

All this doesn't mean that the Great O is right. Given the sheer scale of his administration's proposals, he will be wrong, and probably often enough. (The question is whether he will be right on the big issues.) But the conceit that this man is an Empty Suit has been put back on the rack forever.

For a real empty suit, here is a fun clip from the great 1933 film, "The Invisible Man":

YouTube - The Invisible Man - by James Whale starring ~Claude Rains~

And here is an audio clip from Elvis Costello titled, appropriately, The Invisible Man:

YouTube - The Invisible Man by Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Best part of the song:
"Meanwhile someone's hiding in the classroom
Pawing through the books of history
Never mind there's a good film showing tonight
Where they hang everybody who can read and write
But that could never happen here...
But then again it might"

Oh, that Elvis. I believe he wrote that song during the early days of Reagan's first term. I wonder what he thinks of it today.