Tag: speech

I’ve noticed that Oba­ma’s stock turns of phrase appear more and more often on blogs and com­ing from state­ments from oth­er folks all over the place. To doc­u­ment, these are:

• Let’s be clear
• Make no mis­take

I don’t believe this is con­fir­ma­tion bias. They’re used in the same rhetor­i­cal con­texts, for the most part. It’s a sub­con­scious sign that the per­son speak­ing or writ­ing has a deep respect for (and very like­ly looks up to) the Pres­i­dent.

Per­son­al­ly, I like it when he talks about teach­able moments, when he’s deal­ing with thorny but moral­ly impor­tant issues. I don’t know that I always agree with what he defines as a teach­able moment, but I cer­tain­ly appre­ci­ate the sen­ti­ment that there are times when it is impor­tant to learn a les­son, and to let the moment teach that les­son to you. Your reac­tion to that moment pro­vides some­thing you can teach your­self, and then oth­ers. It’s a good mech­a­nism for thought­ful liv­ing.