12 January 2016

State of the Union 2016: shorter and simpler than the seven before it

President Barack Obama last night delivered what he says was his final state of the union speech (previous SOTUs). He actually has the option of delivering another SOTU speech next January, or sending a written SOTU report to Congress, but Jimmy Carter was the last President to publish a SOTU message at the end of his final year in office. After Carter, Presidents at the end of their last year apparently were more interested in getting their papers to their presidential libraries than in inflicting one last SOTU message on the nation.

Last night’s SOTU was significantly shorter and simpler than Obama’s previous speeches:

Responding for the Republicans, South Carolina’s Gov. Nikki Haley delivered even shorter and simpler remarks — remarks that would have been shorter and simpler still had she resisted the temptation to say “the great state” of South Carolina. She should have said, “I’m Nikki Haley, governor of South Carolina.” I can only assume she was practicing for the 2016 national GOP convention.

I ran Student’s T and Wilcoxon tests on Obama’s numbers. His 2016 SOTU is significantly shorter and simpler than his previous SOTUs. The confidence level is 0.95. These results are good for discussions at cocktail parties, but I’d raise an eyebrow if I found them in a scholarly paper. And I would not conclude that the speech was dumbed down so that Republican voters could understand it more easily. Most likely, the differences can be attributed to the choice of subject matter and speech writers.