In their attempt to find messages that "cut through", politicians - especially those in the federal sphere - can easily set themselves word traps, writes Darrin Barnett.

So much for the shirtfront. Despite assuming an advantageous position to Vladimir Putin's rear during the APEC school photo, Tony Abbott couldn't bring himself to deliver a wet willy, stick on a "Kick Me" sign, or even apply the slightest of wedgies.

Indeed it's doubtful Vlad even felt the faint tickle of being slapped on the back of the neck with a piece of wet lettuce when the leaders posed for the group shot at the APEC summit in Beijing.

The Australian Prime Minister talked a big game by promising to shirtfront Putin, as his poll numbers sat in the doldrums.

Abbott deliberately chose to deliver some fighting words, and it's doubtful he ever intended to follow through.

Since then he has slowly crab-walked away from his tough talk ahead of his meeting with the Russian President, named this week by Forbes as the most powerful man in the world for the second year running.

By declaring "Russian-backed rebels" were likely to be directly responsible for the shooting down of MH17 over Eastern Ukraine in July, Abbott tapped into the community's anger at the terrible event which saw 298 innocent lives lost - including 38 Australians.

He backed that up in October with: "I'm going to shirt-front Mr Putin, you bet you are, you bet I am."

However, Abbott has considerably softened his tone since then, even praising Moscow for promising to help bring the perpetrators of the MH17 atrocity to justice.

Upon arriving in Beijing, he promised "robust discussions" with Putin.

By today it has become: "Russia has said that it will do everything to bring the perpetrators to justice. Good on Russia for saying that and I will just be looking for an assurance from the president that what they said then, they meant, and what they said then is still what they say now."

The point here is that Abbott set a word trap for himself.

The key difference between state and federal politics is that the former is a rolling audit of services, while the latter is a contest of ideas and competing visions for the future.

In state government, the public knows when their trains are late, there are queues in the hospital emergency department, or there aren't enough police on the street.

In the federal war of ideas, however, it is harder to declare a winner in absolute terms - particularly as services are usually delivered by other forms of government.

Indeed insiders find it amusing to judge just how many questions can be answered at federal level with "it's in the national interest" or "getting the balance right". It's very hard to be disproven on such answers.

The temptation for an attention-seeking politician, however, is always to provide something more interesting that "cuts through" - to take risks to be heard.

Therein lies the trap. Pushing the limits is part of the territory and the higher up you are, the more interviews and public appearances you make - and the more word traps you leave.

The net result is that many pollies end up being their own worst enemy.

Just ask Kevin Rudd and his 2009 statement that "climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our time".

When he subsequently rolled over and deferred an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) the following year, one million votes disappeared overnight.

Similarly, when he described taxpayer-funded political advertising in October 2007 as a "cancer on democracy", it well and truly came back to bite him when the mining industry took a dim view of his planned mining tax in 2010.

Julia Gillard no doubt regrets saying just before the 2010 election that "there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead," or subsequently agreeing it was a carbon tax given it could be reasonably be argued as an ETS with an initial fixed price.

Abbott himself is still being punished in punter-land for his utterance just before the 2013 election: "No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS."

And even Joe Hockey is copping it today for a possible $51 billion hole in his first budget, putting in considerable doubt his 2013 pledge that the Coalition “will deliver a surplus in our first year and every year after that."

Sure he couldn't foresee a hostile Senate and deteriorating iron ore price but a Treasurer, more than anyone, should know that you shouldn't sign cheques you can't cash.

Darrin Barnett is a former Canberra Press Gallery journalist and press secretary to prime minister Julia Gillard. He is now a fellow of the McKell Institute. View his full profile here.