President Obama's speeches during his two-day, energy tour have so far not included the expression, "there's no silver bullet" -- his often-used phrase when talking about ways to lower gasoline prices and decrease U.S. dependency on foreign oil.
Amid criticism that the president does not appear to be doing enough to lower gas prices, the phrase did not appear in his remarks in Nevada or New Mexico and was not in his prepared remarks Thursday in Oklahoma at which time he announced he was approving the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The president has used the "silver bullet" phrase frequently over the past several weeks, including a stop last week in suburban Washington and during a weekly radio address earlier this month.
An administration official warned against overreading the text because the president still says there's no "quick fix” to deal with the problem. But a check of the Nevada and New Mexico remarks shows that phrase was not used.
The change in rhetoric -- in which "there’s no silver bullet" doesn’t quite fit the "I'm doing all-of-the-above" -- suggests the administration is still trying to calibrate what will work.
