Some lines go away, some stay and some get reintroduced when it comes to Barack Obama signature sayings. Regardless of the issues, he always has a quick phrase to turn to when explaining a situation.
Here are seven go-to phrases the president relies on when necessary:
1. “Let me be clear” has been a leading catch phrase during Obama’s presidency. It’s been used at times he’d like to forget, such as, “Let me be clear, if you like your doctor or health care provider, you can keep them.” Whether talking about his foreign policy, auto bailouts, or even receiving his Nobel Peace Prize, Obama is fond of using this statement. He used the phrase 1,066 times after just two years in office, according to
Language Monitor.
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2. “Make no mistake,” did far better in his first two years, being used some 2,924 times. His insistence on reiterating it during the 2014 midterm elections didn’t fare well for Democratic congressional candidates when he told a Northwestern University audience, “make no mistake,”
his economic policies were on the ballot, “every single one of them.” Democratic candidates throughout the country had been trying to distance themselves from him during the campaign.
3. “Here’s the deal” should set off alarms when anybody says it, but Obama has had experience in making deals. How else to get what he wants? Obama actually used “Here’s the deal” more often than he used “Let me be clear” in his first two years in office, although the two phrases could be interchangeable as Barack Obama signature statements.
4. “It will not be easy” was Obama’s reshuffling of an earlier “change isn’t easy,” which itself came about following the “change we can believe in” campaign promise. If “it will not be easy,” there’s always “there will be setbacks and false starts.”
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5. “Win the future” was used by Obama nine times during his State of the Union address in 2011. Winning the future included tapping into the creative and imaginative resources of people to outbuild the rest of the world. His plans to win the future came up again during his 2014 State of the Union, in which he called for innovation in the manufacturing sector to create jobs and bring high-tech companies back into the U.S.
6. “Greater together” brings forth the collective mentality that made Obama so attractive to many people in the first place. It means that a group can make things happen no matter what it does to the individual. “We are greater together than we can ever be on our own,” he said to African-American students during the 2012 campaign.
7. “Shared sacrifice” has become an essential Barack Obama signature saying. It comes in handy when making average folks believe they have to make up for the mistakes made by the federal government. Obama uses the term when talking about the national debt. Politicians spend too much, so the people have to repair the damage by paying more taxes. The “shared sacrifice” bit works well when telling Republicans they need to accept tax increases and also telling Democrats to accept cuts to entitlements, if they happen.
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