Next week’s John Locke Foundation Shaftesbury Society speaker, Jim Geraghty, explores for National Review Online readers the president’s latest promise to avoid rest while pursuing an important goal.

Tuesday, President Obama visited the Dutch Embassy in Washington, D.C., and wrote in a condolence book for the victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, “We will not rest until we are certain that justice is done.”

He then departed for a three-day fundraising trip to the West Coast.

Obama’s pledge that “we will not rest until . . . ” may sound familiar to you. In fact, the pledge is so chronically overused, and issued so casually, that it no longer carries much meaning. Here’s a brief history:

April 9, 2009: “We will not rest until we reach a day when not one single veteran falls into homelessness.”

July 31, 2009: “I will not rest until every American who wants a job can find one.”

September 15, 2009: “I want you all to know, I will not rest until anybody who’s looking for a job can find one — and I’m not talking about just any job, but good jobs that give every American decent wages and decent benefits and a fair shot at the American Dream.”

October 23, 2009: “Until the American Dream is within reach for anybody who believes in it, anybody who’s willing to fight for it — we will not rest until that’s happened.”

November 23, 2009: “I will not rest until businesses are investing again and businesses are hiring again and people have work again.”

November 26, 2009: “We cannot rest — and my administration will not rest — until we have revived this economy and rebuilt it stronger than before; until we are creating jobs and opportunities for middle-class families; until we have moved beyond the cycles of boom and bust — of reckless risk and speculation — that led us to so much crisis and pain these past few years.”

December 28, 2009: “A full investigation has been launched into this attempted act of terrorism and we will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable.”

And that was just Obama’s first year in the White House. Geraghty documents other instances of similar promises from 2010 to 2013, then concludes:

If Obama wants to pull his presidency out of its worsening tailspin, he ought to say what he means and mean what he says — and drop the rote promises that everyone knows he won’t keep.