When reporters ask him questions designed to discover whether he really has read James Chace's biography of Dean Acheson, he shouldn't answer with some foreign-policy boilerplate from his stump speech.
But be sure to read the fine print, since there may be strange restrictions and adjustments in the boilerplate of agreements reached with any vendor, agent, or publisher.
And Beijing has done nothing practical to back up its boilerplate admonition for North Korea to improve relations with the U.S. and ROK, repeated last week.