Legal Commentary

Style, Check. Now As to the Substance....

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

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.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on February 10, 2009 (boomark / email).