Turns out, Obama has been doing this since at least 2012, per video evidence on YouTube. And aides said they recall him doing it as far back as 2007, when he made his first run for the presidency.

The move has become such an ingrained part of his performance that we started to wonder whether it has become something of a superstition for the president. In a lengthy 2014 story, Politico revealed that Obama and his aides had begun knocking on wood when they got good news, such as on the Affordable Care Act.

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Is the lectern knocking an overzealous version of the good luck gesture?

Press secretary Josh Earnest said that he didn’t think so. Rather, he said, “it is less knock on wood for luck and more enthusiastic punctuation.”

Obama most often appears to knock three times, but the official said it sometimes is two or four. “He’s been doing this since I first started working for him in 2007,” Earnest said in an email.

The presidential lectern has come in for some memes in the social-media age, with manipulated videos of Obama knocking down his lectern or kicking in the door in a fit of pique or drop-the-mic showmanship.

In popular culture, too, another president also has been known to tap on the nearby furniture. In Showtime's “House of Cards,” the Frank Underwood character played by Kevin Spacey knocks his class ring twice on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office to end Season 2.