Mark Nickolas' Blog: Obama Press Conference Answers Three Grade-Levels Higher Than Bush's First.
I copied each full transcript into separate Word documents. After doing that, I deleted the introductions by both men (since those are largely or fully scripted) and then deleted all reporter questions from the transcripts. What you have left are simply the answers that each president offered, off-the-cuff and unscripted, to all questions.
Then I ran Word's readability tool.
Guess what?
Bush's answers were spoken at 7th grade level. Obama's at a 10th grade level.
Yes, he speaks very well, and shows a command of the issues.
But no, (some of) those policies do leave something to be desired. Take, for example, this one: Geithner’s Plan: Bail out the Banks, Keep the same people in charge and let them do what they want.
Of course the policies will leave something to desired. He’s not the President of Michael Froomkin (or Rafe Colburn). The one thing that gives me hope is that unlike the right wingers who lined up uncritically behind Bush for most of his 8 years, there never was a honeymoon with the left for Obama. The response to the Obama administration’s decision to continue the Bush policies on Jeppesen has been withering (deservedly). Left wing economists have savaged the stimulus plan repeatedly for its various inadequacies. Nobody is giving Obama much benefit of the doubt on how Gitmo is being handled, either.
I think this is a good thing. Presumably the Obama administration cares about what all these smart people have to say about how they’re handling things. So I at least feel like we have a feedback loop that may actually work. The Obama administration is providing more information on what they’re doing, and the President’s supporters are letting him know what they don’t like about it.
speaking of Jeppesen…
It seems bad, but I’m hoping that the strategy actually is to not deviate from the indefensible Bush position so as to allow that the courts the opportunity to eviscerate the states secrets travesty as they should.
To have the Obama team eviscerate the Bush DoJ’s Jeppesen case for the court would not set the right judicial precedent, and is thus less desirable, no ?
Here’s hoping that the court does the right thing…