Early in the 2008 presidential cycle, I followed then ex-Virginia Gov. Mark Warner around a Las Vegas casino. He kept saying phrases like “Transformative change as opposed to incremental change.” It was at about that moment that I decided the adjective “transformative” does not mean anything in politics. It only sounds like it means something. In fact, it is often a warning sign, like when a politician says “Honestly…” before a sentence. Something is up. Change is change. “Transformative” is the political rhetorical equivalent of the word “very,” which all high school composition students learn sooner or later doesn’t do a thing to a sentence. (The sunset is pretty, or it is not pretty, for example. It does not help to say the sunset is “very pretty.”) It is usually meant to distract you from the fact that there is not so much meaning underneath.

Warner, of course, flamed out as a presidential candidate and became a Virginia senator. Barack Obama, however, who hired one of Warner’s speechwriters, the talented Ben Rhodes, and perhaps read the same linguistic focus group data, began adopting the “transformative” adjective. By the time he was elected, the “transformative” word was everywhere. And certainly, Obama’s election, as a black man, as a man with a funny name, as a young man, as a mostly liberal Democrat, represented far more “change” than  John McCain’s election. But was it “transformative”–assuming that word even has a meaning that can be identified? Not so much, according to Politico’s Ben Smith, who gives us a (um, very) good analysis of the president’s poll numbers today.