If nothing else, the Obama administration's tone is consistent.
Since 2011, the president and his cabinet members have declared Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to be illegitimate and said that he has to go.
They are not wrong to think that, but nothing has been done to back up those strong, repetitive words and make Assad's departure a reality. Only recently did Obama embrace arming moderate Syrian rebels in their fight against Assad, which even former Obama Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said was too late a move to help prevent the spread of the terror group ISIL.
"The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way," Obama first wrote in 2011, as Assad brutally cracked down on protesters during the Arab Spring. "For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside."
"I am confident that Assad's days are numbered," Obama said during the third presidential debate of 2012.
"I'm confident that Assad will go," he said in Jordan in 2013. "It's not a question of if. It's when."
Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have echoed the boss' words over the years, as have spokespersons Jay Carney, Marie Harf, and others.
But Assad remains "with renewed confidence," as one NBC report put it late last year. Since 2011, he's used chemical weapons against his own people, issued veiled threats against the United States and now appears to be employing a long-term strategy to benefit from U.S. bombing of ISIL in Syria.
When it comes to Assad leaving power, it sadly is indeed a question of if.