SOTU Address Notches 4th Lowest Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score Since FDR

[bijou]

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

Barack Obama's ability as a public speaker since his 2008 presidential campaign has been alternately viewed, often depending on whether or not one is an Obama supporter, along various dyads: being inspirational versus being aloof, intellectualizing versus lecturing etc.

Along those lines, in her first month as a commentator for FOX News, Sarah Palin criticized Obama's first State of the Union Address on Wednesday night as "lecturing" the American public.

Unlike the criticisms hurled at his predecessor, however, few have ever charged that the President, a former senior lecturer in Constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, has written or spoken too simplistically or catered his words to the lowest common denominator.

However, 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. ...

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2010/01/professor_obama_presidents_sta.php

No wonder he got a bump in his approval from his base.

[DefiantSix]

Who's got a mole ready to commit suicide at the DUmp?

[The Village Idiot]

Who's got a mole ready to commit suicide at the DUmp?

They would have to reformat the hard drive several times for this one.

[Chris]

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.

It was Bush's fault!