It's a handy rule-of-thumb that when a politician – usually in a press conference, where he's annoyed repeatedly with the same question about his judgment – announces that he is or is not something, well, he is that thing.
- "I'm not a crook": Richard Nixon set the gold standard in 1973 with this announcement, which the Watergate affair showed he exactly was.
- "I am not an ideologue": Barack Obama in January 2010, denying what he exactly is.
- "I'm not the emperor of the United States": Barack Obama in February 2013, suggesting what he dreams to be.
Recent examples of this phenomenon have come tumbling in hard and fast:
- "I don't think we're stupid": U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, discussing the P5+1's very stupid Joint Plan of Action with Iran in November 2013, and referring to the Obama administration as a whole.
- "I am not a bully": New Jersey's Governor Chris Christie, responding on Jan. 9 to revelations that his staff had used arch-bullying tactics.
- "Je suis social-démocrate" ("I am a social democrat"): French President François Hollande on Jan. 14, precisely as he announced a series of anti-socialist spending and tax cuts.
 French president François Hollande at his annual press conference. |
(January 16, 2014)
June 9, 2017 update: For a repeat of these and also many newer examples the same spirit, see my weblog entry, "From 'Not a Crook' to 'Not a Liar': A Potted History of Political Denials."
