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Friday, January 27, 2012

Barack Obama's SOTUs Have All Been Written At An 8th Grade Level

Now this is interesting: According to the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, Barack Obama's State of the Union Address last night was written at an 8th grade level. In fact, none of his 3 SOTU speeches have reached a 9th grade level.

Smart Politics (which conducted the testing), claims Obama scored the lowest average of any modern day president. Even George 'Dubya' Bush, razzed about his lack of verbal skills, ranked higher than Obama, his dad George H.W., Clinton and Reagan.

JFK, Eisenhower and Nixon scored highest, with Kennedy at a 12th grade level, Dwight Eisenhower at 11.9, and Richard Nixon at 11.5.



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. Longer sentences and sentences utilizing words with more syllables produce higher scores. Shorter sentences and sentences incorporating more monosyllabic words yield lower scores

He said his message was simple. So simple I slept through part of it. But, as per usual, there were overblown promises that he can't and will never keep. 

You can view the charts here.

6 comments:

Cranky White Woman said...

Yep, he's the smartest guy in the room...if he's the ONLY guy in the room.

Incognito said...

ha... very true. and if he has his teleprompTer

Cranky White Woman said...

No...if he has the telepromptor, then the telepromptor is the smartest guy in the room.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

It is real unfair to bash a good long speech with outstanding soporific qualities.

Incognito said...

heh. :)

Incognito said...

@Snoopy... looong speech full of platitudes, yes, but had a nice snooze.