John Kerry must be kicking himself. “Nuanced” is a loser. But “opaque” is boffo. From The New York Times:

Even some of Mr. Obama’s friends call him unusually opaque. After hashing out a question with him, “you may come away thinking, ‘Wow, he agrees with me,’ ” said Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Columbia and a former adviser to Palestinian diplomatic delegations. “But later, when you get home and think about it, you are not sure.”
But defenders say that Mr. Obama’s reticence is as intellectual as it is tactical.

If Shakespeare could write like that, he’d have used it in Hamlet. The Times piece is ingenious: All these words — “opaque”, “reticent”, “wary” — are intended to suggest a man too complex to be pigeonholed by simplistic labels. Yet oddly enough he has the most liberal voting record in the Senate. If only his voting hand were as opaque, reticent, wary, etc, as his subtle and elusive mind.