Mr. Obama's defenders said he appeared to be trying to smooth over a tense situation.
Could it in fact be something that helps smooth over a tough situation with a foreign country?
Mr. Obama told radio talk-show host Michael Smerconish last week that his re-election will smooth over bad feelings.
In recent years, as trade between the countries has boomed, they have attempted to smooth over regular border disputes.
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As a presidential contender, Lee's first task will be to heal, or at least smooth over, the divisions within his party.
Mr Trichet presides over a currency zone more diverse than America's, but without the fiscal stabilisers that help smooth over regional variations.
In recent months he has tried to smooth over tensions with Cambodia.
It helps smooth over some of the unevenness encountered week to week and illustrates how misleading initial estimates of economic data can be.
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Quid pro quo, Israel's leaders help Russia smooth over its differences with America, even those that ought to disturb Israel just as much.
Ministers had hoped to smooth over dissent by introducing the cards gradually, beginning with students, foreigners, airport workers and other soft or sensible targets.
At the very time when the government needs to step in and smooth over the rough economy, it lacks the financial means to do so.
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There are more of those to give, more causes to pursue, more crises to smooth over and more sunsets to watch from the Truman Balcony.
There were bumps in the beginning that Bill helped smooth over.
Impacts could be difficult to smooth over time, even for governments.
Barry even enlisted his former foe, Hillary the Hypocrat to smooth over bad relations with neighboring kingdoms over unpaid borrowings, the fake food sales and some stolen food.
The recently reelected U.S. president is said to like her and Obama is looking for a big corporate star to help him smooth over relations with the business community.
George Papandreou, the new foreign minister, helped smooth over an awkward row between the Albanian and Macedonian prime ministers when the Macedonians at first tried to keep out thousands of the refugees.
The Muslim Brotherhood's political branch praised Mr. Mekky for his role in promoting the judiciary's independence, in an apparent attempt to smooth over public differences as Mr. Morsi faces accusations he is becoming increasingly autocratic.
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We are left with the stark realization that we are not in control and we can no longer use marketing to just smooth over the rough spots in our offerings and the disconnects in our brand propositions.
Though the company has thrown up a public response on its blog, it doesn't clarify what transpired, what "contractual obligations" were allegedly breached, or what (if anything) Kik might do to attempt to smooth over the spat.
ENGADGET: RIM: Kik was pulled from App World over 'breached contractual obligations'
He sent a letter to FORBES, dated July 20, 2007, saying Shari had made "little or no contribution" to Viacom or CBS. On July 24, seeking to smooth over the flap, he faxed his daughter a memo.
At the same time, however, it is almost impossible to contemplate large projects without debt, nor to smooth over the minor ups and downs of the economic cycle and the timing differences between tax receipts and spending demands.
While he says he doesn't think there's much more Obama can do publicly to smooth over the differences with House Republicans, Zelizer said that Obama can't let stand Boehner's declaration that he's abandoning any more legislative deal-making with the White House.
The priority in Brussels is for smooth management over the next six months, not bust-ups over press freedom.
Mr Brown would spend his visit trying to "smooth things over" with his party's biggest political backers, he added.
It says Tokyo was just "trying to smooth things over" by insisting that the Post had misquoted Mr Abe last week.
You get the sense that the White House thought that they'd be able to smooth things over here and that the main conflict would be with Democrats.
If you've experienced some rebooting issues with your handset, it's likely that the unspecified grab bag of "other improvements" includes a few welcome bug fixes to smooth things over.
ENGADGET: T-Mobile HTC 8X gets Windows Phone 8 update packing text messaging and WiFi tweaks
If unresponsiveness in Cadillac's CUE infotainment system has been a personal point of frustration, relief is on the way: an update to smooth things over is being worked on.
ENGADGET: Cadillac to update CUE infotainment system for improved responsiveness
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