Somebody’s got some ‘splainin’ to do: Smartest President in history speaks at eighth grade level

The drumbeat has been constant since the day BarackObama first burst upon the national scene: This guy is smarter than the rest of us. He operates on a completely different intellectual plane than mere mortals. He’s brilliant, you’re not.

average-flesch-kincaid-grade-level.JPGSo how do Obamabots explain the fact that his State of the Union was written at eighth grade level. In fact, it only one State of the Union address in the last seventy-five years was written at a lower level.

University of Minnesota Smart Politics explains:

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.

But Tuesday evening’s address beat even that.

A Smart Politics analysis of 69 orally delivered State of the Union Addresses since the mid-1930s finds the text of Obama’s speech to have notched the second lowest score on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test recorded by a U.S. President.

A little advice, Mr President:

No reason to dumb it down. Alan Grayson isn’t in Congress anymore.

UPDATE: Just to do a reality check, we performed the same analysis on a
couple other pieces of writing.

Paul Ryan¹s response to the SOTU was written at the 10.08 grade level.

Michele Bachmann¹s Tea Party response was written at the 9.00 grade level.

The University of Minnesota¹s explanation (excerpted in this article) was written at the 9.24 grade level.

IHateTheMedia.com¹s portion of this story was written at an 8.12 grade level.

Of course, no one ever called us the Smartest Blog In History.

Source: University of Minnesota

This post was last modified on January 26, 2021

Barack ObamaState of the Union
editor:

View Comments (51)

  • "Obama’s speech writers were targeting his base – non thinkers..."

    Obviously Obama knows something you don't. The stats would probably indicate that most Americas are non-thinkers.

  • Most Americans are pretty ignorant, and stupid when it comes to requiring an understanding of things that are beyond them, but relevant.

    Obama's speech, if anything, relates more to the Average American, and even to younger Americans. If anything, a president should facilitate the understanding of their citizens.

    Who are you to criticize that? Simply a hater, in search of a reason to drive said hate. No intelligent human being gives a single shit about the level of writing of a president. An intelligent person would realize that what matters is not the presentation of content, but the subject and content itself. Get your priorities straight, buddy.

    Its time this god damn country throws away its aged and crumbly European foundations. This is going to be a Yellow Nation eventually, and people will have to accept the change. Asians are the next Variety of man, theres no point in expressing racist values now, considering soon you will be the fool. You are the coward.

  • Actually this is consistent with the Genius Obama scam. He is talking down to the stupid people in the general population, who cannot begin to understand what the Great One has to say. Besides, ALL speeches, good bad or indifferent are written by speech writers and are nothing but political propaganda. Didn't anyone ever watch The West Wing?

    • Nope, never did watch that show. May have exposed myself to about 10 minutes of it once with no lasting infection.

      • You may want to watch the show, then think about everything the actors say and do. I mean really think about it and compare the shows concept of what goes on in Washington to what we know really goes on in Washington. The producers were not that far off of the mark. Everything is about behind the doors dealings, smoke screens, and bullshit. Just like in real life.

  • Bama will tell you that the public is so dumb, he has to talk down to them.

    Don't you know that the public is so dumb, that the government needs to tell them every move to make. Bamacare, financial institutions, and the auto industry were the first steps. he'll get closer to helping the public when he takes over the internet, energy, and the media.

    • Don't blame all this on the Obummer! There are 535 egotistical fools sitting in D.C. and the majority of them think the same way. They may be called Senators and Representatives but all they represent is their own interests. Which means getting re-elected and screwing the taxpayer. All legislation, like the Obummer HealthCare fiasco, has to come from the House, be approved by the Senate, then the President signs it into law.

      The President, whoever he may be, takes the heat but in reality it is all elected fools in Washington that are driving our country into the financial ditch.

  • Hey, we're not the most erudite bunch of bloggers ourselves...but then, we sort of know our own audience while on the otherhand, Obama's handlers and speech writers assume all Americans are stupid without really trying to actually find out if we Amerians are all stupid or not. I rather like our approach.

  • My dismay stems from the fact that there was no gratuitous comment on the phrase "69 orally delivered" in the original story. I'm wondering that's some kind of coded message...

  • If that chart is accurate then we've been getting more and more uneducated.

    To an extent, I think that's true, but it's not the entire explantion; it could be that modern communications (the Interent, cell phones, twitter, texting, television, movies) put an emphasis on rapid, brief communications, visual images and action. People have been re-wired for rapidity, that's why Kennedy and Eisenhower score so high---they were Presidents 50 and 60 years ago when most people got their information from newspapers and magazines, so they read and spoke in longer sentences.

  • Mods...is there a way to find quotes by Dems when the price of gas under GWB was about $2...now with the Middle East on fire...it's going to go up...

    • I don't know other than searching with Google. That's how we'd do it. It's funny, just last night at the Farmers Market in town here, I walked up to the Democrat booth to annoy the idiots working it. I asked the guy about the profits Obama was making off $90+ oil. He looked puzzled. I reminded him that when oil was up during the Bush administration he had told me that Bush and Cheney and all their oil buddies were driving the price up on purpose and making billions. So, I asked him why it's up now, with Obama in charge. He said this time it was all the speculators causing it, it wasn't Obama's fault, and in fact, Obama is trying to keep the price down.

      I had three glasses of wine before I stopped by his booth, so I think I lost my cool, especially when he said Obama is not in bed with the banksters, and that the Republicans in congress were far richer than the Democrats in congress.

      Mr. Editor always asks me why I subject myself to this, and I just can't help it. But I least I didn't punch anyone out. I eventually found my wife blocks away as she does like to stand next to me when I "debate." :)

      • Hey, chill out with all those long sentences with polysyllabic words.

        Dem-o-crat no dig you dig? You buy or-gan-ic basil plant from van. help dem-o-crat grow weed and make cops no won-der about green-house you dig?

  • Bush, Regan and Clinton aren't much better. In this case, I think it says more about the audience than the speaker. Presidents have had to dumb down their messages over the past 25 years -- even after the gazillions in federal money spent on Education since Johnson launched his Great Society.

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