--- title: The 2012 Candidates’ Telling Verbal Tics description: We all have verbal tics, my friends (as John McCain might say). And with the proliferation of speeches, interviews and debates that campaigns entail, the... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7186211/the-2012-candidates-telling-verbal-tics/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2011-12-16T19:09:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-18T08:05:01.729Z article:section: Politics og:title: The 2012 Candidates’ Telling Verbal Tics og:description: We all have verbal tics, my friends (as John McCain might say). 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Dec 16, 2011 7:09 PM UTC by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Dec 16, 2011 7:09 PM UTC We all have verbal tics, my friends (as John McCain might say). And with the proliferation of speeches, interviews and debates that campaigns entail, the verbal proclivities of politicians are bound to make themselves apparent in an election year. From Newt Gingrich’s pedantry to Mitt Romney’s waffling, here’s a breakdown of the 2012 candidates’ most telling linguistic crutches.more **Newt Gingrich:** _frankly_, _fundamentally_ Gingrich is an f-word man, of sorts. One never has to wait very long for him to announce that, frankly, he has a fundamentally sound grasp of things. Take these quips from last night’s debate in Iowa: --- > “” --- Such five-dollar adverbs couldn’t be more appropriate for a man who fancies himself a a master of recondite subjects. As one CNN analyst put it after the debate, Gingrich is as likely to seem impressive and intellectual as “highhanded.” (Admittedly, “grotesquely dictatorial” has a nice ring to it.) That means there is no more classic example of his tics in action than this: --- > “” --- **Rick Perry:** _I would suggest to you_, _I’ll guarantee you_ Note how long Perry’s go-to phrases are. Combine those syllables with his Southern drawl and you’ve got a man who is really buying himself some time to think. For example, after suggesting last night that members of Congress should work part-time, a moderator asked him how much should be shaved off the 151 days members clocked last year. His answer: --- > “” --- Here’s another good example of him stalling (before giving an evasive answer), after Christiane Amampour [asked](http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/newsmakers/transcript-yahoo-abc-news-interview-rick-perry-195808212.html) him whether there is too much or not enough religion in government. --- > “” --- His tendency to “guarantee” is also a phrase that highlights his Texan roots; that’s a state where, stereotypically, a fella will guarantee another fella ’til the cows come home. Here, Perry is speaking about members of Congress profiting from their jobs. --- > “” --- Frontier justice! **Rick Santorum:** _actually_ If anyone would actually pay attention to poor Rick Santorum, he might minimize his use of this word. The way he throws it into sentences often implies, _Well, if you had been listening to a darn thing I ever said or bothered to read up on my biography, you’d already know that \_\_\_\_\_\_. Thanks for nothing, lamestream media_. Take these debate excerpts, the first from last night in a discussion about “activist” judges: --- > “” --- Unless he actually does well in the upcoming Iowa caucuses, we may be hearing less of this one. **Jon Huntsman:** _I’m here to tell you_ Huntsman’s habitual lead-in could suggest an attention deprivation similar to Santorum’s (as in, “Hey, over here!”), but it’s certainly a classic rhetorical phrase meant to display confidence and even defiance. --- > “” --- The last two are both from last night’s debate. And the latter displays another classic Huntsman tic: his tendency to use the royal “we” instead of “I,” as in “we’re going to lead the charge.” In _New York_ magazine, John Heilemann [suggests](http://nymag.com/news/politics/jon-huntsman-mitt-romney-2011-8/) that the “we-we-we instead of me-me-me” means “Huntsman simply finds it hard to talk about himself in the way that’s second nature for most national politicians.” **Mitt Romney:** _look_, _let me tell you_, _if you will_ When Romney was the clear front-runner, he often employed _look_ in the debates. That word is an assertive signal that says, “I’m going to say one more thing about this topic, and then we’re going to consider this case closed.” These are from late summer: --- > “” --- He’s used it noticeably less since others have taken turns topping him in the polls. But _let me tell you_ and _if you will_ are still Romney favorites. While Barack “Let me be clear” Obama’s tic suggests that his words are always getting twisted, Romney uses _let me tell you_ to emphasize that he now truly holds a position in areas where he’s flip-flopped. He employed it liberally last night, defending stances on issues such as gay rights and abortion. --- > “” --- _If you will_ is more likely to show up in a one-on-one interview when Romney doesn’t want to fully commit or fully take ownership of a phrase. It might seem humble on the surface, as in, “if you might wish to accept my imperfect phrasing.” But, as Geoffrey Pullum [notes](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000138.html), _if you will_ can also “signal hedging about vocabulary choice—a momentary uncertainty about whether the adjacent expression is exactly the right form of words or not.” Romney has, for instance, taken a beating about his changing views on “amnesty,” so here he hedges: --- > “” --- [Defending](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,588337,00.html#ixzz1gdwLQrHx) his Massachusetts healthcare plan, the one often compared to Obama’s, clearly also puts him on edge. Note that in the first example we get a double-whammy: --- > “” --- Sure, it’s easy to get lost in analyzing verbal tics and, perhaps, over-assigning meaning to them. 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