Is this really so confusing to most people? I feel like it was pretty clear throughout that the first statement in most cases was: "We expect X is [not] effective based on history, but we aren't certain because this is so new" and the second statement was "Our initial research shows that we were [right / wrong]" followed sometimes by a third statement which is "As more information arrives we were right about Y and wrong about Z".

I agree with you that politicians are afraid to give it to us straight, but I attribute their hesitance not to how they expect the people to respond but how they expect media to respond. You get in a little trouble for being wishy-washy, but you get big trouble for giving a straight, honest well-informed sounding (described this way because its not like the announcers are the ones actually doing the research) detailed response and then finding out some of your details are wrong.

I have been thinking about this a lot, we all hate the way politicians speak (me included) but we made them speak this way because while they may not impress anyone they don't give definitive sound bites that will then be repeated over and over on the news when they happen to be wrong.