We should all be active participants in a good and decent public life, President Barack Obama lectured in his final State of the Union address. But then he issued this important caveat: “It is not easy.” And how! But we should be grateful for small mercies: At least he didn’t say “and it won’t be quick.” For that rhetorical pairing—it won’t be easy and it won’t be quick—has been one of the most persistent and annoying clichés of the president’s years in the spotlight.
It was already a tic on the stump in 2008, when Obama would preface his assertion that “it’s time to come together and change” with the warning “It won’t be easy, it won’t be quick.” In his nomination acceptance speech months before, he had proclaimed: “America, our work will not be easy.” A few years later he allowed, “As I’ve said since I first ran for this office, solving our challenges won’t be quick or easy.” How right he was.
Rebuild our economy and transition to a clean-energy future? “We knew it wouldn’t be easy or quick.”
Ending gun violence? “It won’t be easy.”
Partner with the Afghan government? “I want to repeat we don’t anticipate this process will be easy or quick.”
“Rooting out a cancer like [the Islamic State] won’t be easy and it won’t be quick.” But how about in conjunction with Arab allies? “This is not going to be something that is quick and is not something that is going to be easy.”
Peace between Israelis and Palestinians? “None of us are under any illusion that this would be easy,” and “The work will not be easy.”
Even the first lady got into the act. In a speech on ending childhood obesity, Michelle said, “This won’t be easy—and it won’t be quick.”
It-won’t-be-easy-and-it-won’t-be-quick has been the default answer to criticism of the administration. Naysayers are preemptively dismissed as knuckleheads who imagine everything is quick and easy.
IWBEAIWBQ has been such a reflexive, prophylactic excuse for anticipated failure that the president has trotted it out even when real change was just around the corner. Confronted with the challenge of “ending this cycle of rising gas prices,” the president pronounced it “won’t be easy, and it won’t happen overnight.” But, of course, it did (no thanks to his administration). How easy was that?
