smart vs. smartly

Sen. Barack Obama typically uses adverbs with grace, but it appears Sen. John McCain is ruffling his feathers.

“If we think we can secure our country just by talking tough without acting tough and smart, then we will misunderstand this moment and miss its opportunities,” Obama said today in his address at the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

The alliteration is lovely and the use of a singular pronoun for moment, appreciated. But each time Obama uses an adjective, he should be using an adverb, the proper way to modify a verb.

“Talking tough” is a widely-used phrase, but technically, “tough” is an adjective, not an adverb. You might demonstrate tough talk, but you don’t talk tough. You talk toughly, or talk with toughness. Likewise, acting must be modified by adverbs, toughly and smartly – or, a little more natural sounding, intelligently.

Sometimes adverbs don’t sound as smooth to the ear, and the working solution is less than ideal: to reconstruct the sentence. In this case, Obama could’ve said, “We must act with toughness and intelligence.”

While we’re on the subject of smarts and grammar, the move title “Get Smart” is grammatically correct. To get smart is to reach a level of intelligence, and levels are nouns to be modified with adjectives.