Do "Tell"

I've been meaning to link to Marc Cooper's post about his determination of Donald Rumsfeld's "tell," which is Rumsfeld's unconscious clue that he is either lying or bluffing.

The president has one, too. I heard him on the radio this afternoon and noted - as I have noted before - that when he usually pauses before uttering a (usually) two word phrase, he's laying down a mound of the stuff people fertilize fields with several feet thick. For example:

"They died in a  . . .  noble cause."

"That must be one of those . . . exaggerations."

Or today on the radio:

"This is a  . . .good deal."

From a rhetorical standpoint, when one hears it, it sounds rehearsed and it sounds insincere. It sounds as if he is trying to convince himself that the ship of state is not headed for an iceberg.