Tom Bombadil is represented by Tolkien as eccentric, very eccentric. As Sam says:
He’s a caution and no mistake. I reckon we may go a good deal further and see naught better, nor queerer.
By
a caution and
queerer Sam means that Tom Bombadil is
eccentric.
Should eccentric folk not appear in
The Lord of the Rings? That seems to be the main problem that d4rk3lf has with Tom Bombadil, that he simply won’t fit in. But as Gandalf explains it, Tom Bombadil just can’t fit in. Yet Gandalf obviously respects him immensely, even though outside his territory Bombadil is apparently of very little use.
As Tolkien writes in letter 144 of
Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien:
The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control. but if you have, as it were taken ‘a vow of poverty’, renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless. It is a natural pacifist view, which always arises in the mind when there is a war. But the view of Rivendell seems to be that it is an excellent thing to have represented, but that there are in fact things with which it cannot cope; and upon which its existence nonetheless depends.
One famous eccentric is talked of at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton . Another is talked of at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman . Of course neither is Tom Bombadil. But it would also have done Elrond no use to summon either to his Council. Emperor Norton would probably have had nothing to say to the point and Grigori Perelman has a history of refusing such supposed honours.
But presumably part of the point is that Elrond summoned hardly anyone to his Council which he did not know about until most had already arrived, apparently by chance and it became apparent that a Council was desperately needed.