You would think that politicians and diplomats, knowing their every utterance will be parsed and debated, would choose words more carefully. Yet experience shows they often do not.

There were a couple of recent cases in point following the terrorist attacks on Paris. Speaking at a news conference in Turkey following the G-20 summit, President Obama referred to the horrific attacks on civilians by Islamic State supporters as a “setback.”

“There will be setbacks and there will be successes,” Obama said. “The terrible events in Paris were obviously a terrible and sickening setback.”

While an accurate assessment, setback was a terribly small word to use to describe one of the most deadly attacks on Western soil since 9-11. A setback is missing a quarterly budget goal or losing legislative seats in an election. It does not fit with what happened in Paris.

Perhaps he meant to calm the public. Instead, this latest example of “No Drama Obama” raised questions about whether his heart is in the fight.

The comments were particularly jarring when contrasted with those of French President Francois Hollande, who declared the attacks as “acts of war,” said that “France is at war” and vowed to battle ISIS “without a respite, without a truce … it is not a question of containing but of destroying this organization.”

The French people were also not happy with Secretary of State John Kerry who, for unfathomable reasons, sought to contrast the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine office with the recent Paris slaughter.

“There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of — not a legitimacy — but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow, and say, OK, they're really angry because of this and that. This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn't to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong,” he told the Paris embassy staff.

Talk about making a distinction without a difference.

Choosing words unwisely has happened to political leaders before and will happen again. Recall President Gerald Ford in a 1976-election debate stating, “There is no Soviet Union domination in Eastern Europe.” That was news to people in Poland, Hungary and Romania, then under Soviet domination.

In 2009, with hundreds dead and thousands living in tents after an earthquake struck his country, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi urged citizens to look on the bright side.

“Of course their current lodgings are a bit temporary, but they should see it like a weekend of camping,” he told reporters.

In terms of saying stupid things, that remains a high bar to beat.