Trump speaks at lowest grade level of the last 15 President

[_aussieguy55]

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-fire-and ... 3SOAbX5S6w

"The analysis assessed the first 30,000 words each president spoke in office, and ranked them on the Flesch-Kincaid grade level scale and more than two dozen other common tests analyzing English-language difficulty levels. Trump clocked in around mid-fourth grade, the worst since Harry Truman, who spoke at nearly a sixth-grade level.

At the top of the list were Hoover and Jimmy Carter, who were basically at an 11th-grade level, and President Barack Obama, in third place with a high ninth-grade level of communicating with the American people."

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

So, basically just above that of an average Australian?

- Doc

[_Chap]

This is not a great surprise.

I am trying hard to think of any measure of personal development and intellectual ability on which Trump is likely to outrank his predecessors in office.

Absent that, how about comparing the amount of money (adjusted to current values) he inherited from his father? That was, of course, his greatest advantage in life.

[_EAllusion]

Trump is very unsophisticated in his speech. He relies heavily on repeating simple phrases over and over, has almost zero depth to anything he says, and garbles basic grammar alarmingly often.

That said, Flesch-Kincaid isn't a great way to measure the sophistication of a President's speaking style in a way that weighs in on how smart or effective of a communicator they are. Sometimes prose is quite elegant yet simple according to that metric. Hemingway is famously at about at a 4th grade level on that scale. I believe Cormac McCarthy is pretty close to him.

[_EAllusion]

The other thing to think about is that President's have speeches written for them. If this analysis isn't differentiating extemporaneous speech from prepared remarks the President came up with from what speech-writers wrote for them, then I don't think it's helpful on that front either.

Different Presidents have had different relationships with speech-writers. Obama famously was the principle author on some of his most famous speeches, which is quite unusual for a modern President. George W. Bush, by all accounts, just let his writers write for him. Both Clinton and Trump like(d) to ad lib a lot during pre-written speeches. Other Presidents have been more inclined to stick to the script.

Donald Trump tends to read remarks written for him like a cross between someone who just realized they took a double dose of valium and a hostage in day 146 of captivity, so he makes it easy to tell when he's reading someone else's words. It's perversely admirable. For other Presidents, it can be hard to know when someone else's words end and theirs begin.

[_Bach]

He has to! Virtually his entire audience is a product of our continued declining public education system.

[_Chap]

He has to! Virtually his entire audience is a product of our continued declining public education system.

Dear me!

That sounds like a national emergency to me ... what do you think?

[_EAllusion]

Americans have never been more educated than they are currently. This is true both by educational attainment and cognitive / aptitude performance tests.

Trump does appeal best to some of the least educated segments of society, but you would be putting the horse before the cart if you think he’s just dumbing it down for them.

What is true is that lots of people in our society have seemingly lost the value of having leaders be elites who know more than them and speak better than them. There’s the infamous “beer test” where politicians are said to appeal by how regular they come off. Trump seems to take it a step further and make people pleased that the President is definitely no better than them. Makes you feel good to know you could do that too. Heck, you could be better than that. It’s anti-elitism gone off the rails.

[_EAllusion]

He has to! Virtually his entire audience is a product of our continued declining public education system.

Dear me!

That sounds like a national emergency to me ... what do you think?

Lol.

[_canpakes]

Trump seems to take it a step further and make people pleased that the President is definitely no better than them. Makes you feel good to know you could do that too. Heck, you could be better than that. It’s anti-elitism gone off the rails.

It’s kind of a strange evolution of the failed, “everyone’s a winner!” philosophy. In the new form, the only acceptable people are the ones that are seen as no ‘better’ than the one doing the judging, where the amorphous definition of ‘better’ resides within the insecurities of that individual. Everyone else is an ‘elite’ who must be shunned.

It’s intellectual, psychological and emotional tribalism at its best.