Confirmed: Obama's Speeches Written For 8th Graders
I'm genuinely surprised. Given the previous oratorical heights to which our Vulcan Pericles had soared, I really expected more. Oh well:
Text of Obama's Address has a readability score for an average 8th grader - two grades lower than George W. Bush's Addresses and the historical average for modern presidents... A Smart Politics analysis of nearly 70 oral State of the Union Addresses since the mid-1930s finds the text of Obama's speech on Wednesday evening to have one of the lowest scores on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test ever recorded by a U.S. President. The Flesch-Kincaid test is designed to assess the readability level of written text, with a formula that translates the score to a U.S. grade level...Obama's Flesch-Kincaid grade level score of 8.8 for his first State of the Union Address was the fourth lowest score since FDR's first Address in 1934... As such, the speech by 'the professor' stands in contrast to his predecessor, 'the cowboy,' George W. Bush... Bush averaged a Flesch-Kincaid score of 10.4 across his seven State of the Union Addresses - or nearly two full grades higher than Obama's speech. Bush's speeches also averaged 2.4 more words per sentence than Obama, at 19.0.
All drafts of all Presidential speeches are timestamped and archived. So some day we'll know whether the phrase "Americans are morons, use smaller words" was an actual margin note or whether it remained implicit. Even the critics who specifically question Obama's literary stylings - critics whose controversial theories are not exactly undermined by the mind-numbing shallowness of the SOTU - don't think that he reads at a junior high level. He just believes we do.
You'll be glad to know that CBS News concluded that "Obama's speech leveraged his strengths," which apparently include "his personal charm and integrity" but not a willingness to speak to Americans like adults. At least Ambinder waited until after the speech to announce that it had been awesome. USA Today knew even beforehand that the simplistic, mawkish crapfest would be rhetorical gold:
Authors, editors and speechwriters interviewed by The Associated Press agree President Obama is indeed a gifted and effective speechmaker, able to set a new tone with the Middle East in his Cairo speech or to turn public opinion, at least temporarily, in favor of changing the health care system after his address to Congress. As a supporter of President Obama for president, Ted Sorensen, a speechwriter to former President John F. Kennedy, welcomed the young Democrat as a winning, Kennedy-esque orator who did not bore the public with "five-point programs" and lectures more fit for the campus than the campaign.
Sorensen went on to note that Obama is "a little too well-informed" to communicate effectively with "typical citizens," explaining that the President's "complicated" thought process is better suited for "university faculties and big newspaper editorial boards." That was in a newspaper. Seriously. An editor read that and thought that it deserved to be printed in ink.
The Washington Post, referencing the speeches that Obama actually gives rather than the speeches his sycophants pretend he gives, finds the President to be a touch less nuanced:
Cheesily generic all-purpose platitudinous filler.
References:
* Obama's Nobel Prize Speech - "I Am Living Testimony To The Moral Force Of Non-Violence," Plus A Few Other Hack Lines [MR]
* "Dreams From My Father" and "Audacity of Hope" Authorship Articles [Cashill.com]
* 'Professor' Obama? President's State of the Union Address Notches 4th Lowest Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score Since FDR [Smart Politics]
* Obama's Speech Leveraged His Strengths [CBS News]
* Speech critics assess Obama's oratory [USA Today]
* In Obama's speeches, one favorite phrase: 'Let me be clear' [WaPo]
* Mark Steyn reaction: A speech by President (fill in the blank) [Steyn]
Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* American Politics
* Media Bias
* Obama Worship
