President Obama's Favorite Words: "Let Me Be Clear"

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For all his flourish, President Barack Obama sure falls back on a few familiar phrases. Make no mistake. change isn't easy. It won't happen overnight. There will be setbacks and false starts. Those who routinely listen to the president have come to expect some of those expressions to pop up in almost every speech.(That includes you, cynics and naysayers, the ones Obama mentions all the time without identifying who is saying nay.) Yet in the portfolio of presidential phrases, none is more pervasive than Obama's four-word favorite: Let me be clear. It is his emphatic windup for, well, everything. "Let me be clear," he said in describing his surprise at winning the Nobel Peace Prize. "I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations."