Some time ago, I toyed with the notion of writing an article contrasting Barack Obama with the nameless protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. I nixed the idea, out of a combination of laziness and the fear that it would be too masturbatory (I know, I know, like it’s stopped me before).

Nonetheless, David Samuels boldly plows ahead with it over at the New Republic, and comes up with one of the more penetrating, non-hysterical psychological portraits of the man who may be our next president that I’ve yet read.