An odd locu­tion that’s puz­zled me since I first noticed it last summer. Markedly dis­so­nant, but seman­ti­cally, not son­i­cally. At one and the same time it man­ages to dis­credit and rein­force the author­ity of the words that are being (have been?) said. On the one hand it splits the speaker against him­self, forces him to quote him­self: I am saying, now, what I said before. Why, then, am I saying it? But on the other hand it deliv­ers us into the middle of things, allows the speaker to quote him­self: These words have a his­tory, see, they pre­cede you. Listen up.

Like Heidegger’s “always already” it names a tense that life knows well but gram­mar has been slow to rec­og­nize. It opens a world where the saying is the said, and it invites you in. (This is not how the plu­per­fect is sup­posed to work.) But/and it evokes the professor’s pointed politesse in doing so. In fact Obama’s “also” is not much more than a gen­er­ous ver­sion of “already”: You didn’t do your home­work? Here, let me tell you again. This time, write it down.

Mostly, it shows us a politi­cian chaf­ing against the demands of his pro­fes­sion: “I’ve also said” is Obama trying not to bore him­self, not allow­ing him­self to pre­tend that this is the first time he’s said this thing that we will ask him to say over and over again until the record­ing equip­ment gets it just right.

By the time that hap­pens, of course, it will almost cer­tainly be wrong.