The Dumbing-Down Of The SOTU

The picture above is of President James Madison. When The Guardian newspaper applied the Flesch-Kincaid readability test to all of the State of the Union speeches given by all of the United States presidents, it was discovered that Madison's speeches were written for a more educated audience than those of any other president. This test comes up with a score that shows the level of education (or number of years of education) that something is written at (and has been used by the U.S. Army and Navy to make sure their manuals are written at a level that can be understood by all their recruits).

President Madison's State of the Union speeches averaged a score of 21.6. On the other end, the president whose speeches were written for the lowest level of education was George H.W. Bush, whose speeches averaged an education level of 8.6. Now don't misconstrue these numbers. They are not numbers that have anything to do with the intelligence of the presidents -- but only to the education level of those who could be expected to read and understand those speeches.

In fact, if you look at the two lists below (of the presidents whose speeches scored highest and lowest on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test) it will show that all of the presidents with the lowest scores were presidents in this modern era, while the presidents with the highest scores were pretty far back in this country's history. In other words, the modern SOTU speeches have been "dumbed-down". This is probably because they were written to appeal to a much different audience than the speeches given many years ago.

In the earliest days of this country, the audience for the State of the Union speeches was a more educated elite (mainly members of Congress). There was no television or radio, and probably few people other than those in Congress were able to hear (or even read) those speeches. Today's State of the Union audience is much different. Since they are televised and viewed by millions of Americans, they must be written for a lower educational level (since many hearing those speeches don't have a college education, and some might not even have a high school education). It would be counter-productive to write a speech that went over the heads of many audience members.

Here are the 12 presidents with the highest Flesch-Kincaid scores, followed by the 12 presidents with the lowest average scores for their speeches. I present this simply as an interesting fact, and not as a comment on any president's quality or term of office.

HIGHEST SCORES
1. James Madison...............21.6
2. Martin Van Buren...............20.7
3. Franklin Pierce...............20.0
4. John Quincy Adams...............19.9
5. Andrew Jackson...............19.7
6. John Tyler...............19.1
7. Thomas Jefferson...............18.5
8. Grover Cleveland...............18.3
9. Zachary Taylor...............18.3
10. John Adams...............18.2
11. James Monroe...............17.9
12. George Washington...............17.9

LOWEST SCORES
1. George H.W. Bush...............8.6
2. Barack Obama...............9.2
3. Bill Clinton...............9.8
4. Lyndon Johnson...............10.0
5. George W. Bush...............10.0
6. Ronald Reagan...............10.4
7. Harry Truman...............10.9
8. Gerald Ford...............11.2
9. Jimmy Carter...............11.6
10. Richard Nixon...............11.8
11. Calvin Coolidge...............12.1
12. John Kennedy...............12.3