smart cliches

Someone was just telling me that a draft "Succeeds almost in spite of itself."  Seconds later they're telling me that it's obvious that the writer "put a lot of effort into it, but some things don't quite come off."  While there isn't a strict contradiction in these two statements, it is easy to see that something has gone wrong.

And what went wrong was facilitated or caused by the unmeaning slip into a cliche, here, succeeding in spite of one's self.  The trouble is that this is an intelligent cliche, in that it actually expresses something that is hard to put into a few words without having advance formulation.  So the expression has utility and carries meaning.  And that's the rub - it was being misused.  All the speaker meant was that the draft was a mixed bag of things that worked and didn't, but on balance better than worse.  Perhaps feeling - wrongly - that this observation was too thin, the speaker reaches without realizing for a "smarter" way of putting it - and instead found something smarter that says something else.