Politico notices that the White House can't get over itself

Carol Lee notes the unprecedented use of "unprecedented":

The Obama White House is addicted to the “unprecedented.”

Perhaps it was a sign when President Barack Obama sat down in January to record his first weekly address and announced: “We begin this year and this administration in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action."

What has followed is declaration after declaration of “unprecedented” milestones. Some of them are legitimate firsts, like the president’s online town hall at the White House in May.

But others the president wins merely on a technicality, and several clearly already have precedents.
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But at times Obama’s use of “unprecedented” is questionable.

Obama has said he “took office amid unprecedented economic turmoil” and that the situation demanded “unprecedented international cooperation” and resulted in his signing of the “unprecedented" Recovery Act. Yet it seems the Great Depression and the New Deal might be considered precedents for the current economic crisis and the $787 billion stimulus plan.

And Obama’s promise of “an unprecedented effort to root out waste and inefficiency” sounded a lot like promises of past presidents.

“I believe the Congress and the American people approve my goals of economy and efficiency,” President Lyndon B. Johnson told Congress in 1965. “I believe they are as opposed to waste as I am. We can and will eliminate it.”

Of course his spending IS unprecedented.