The State Of Obama Address

Glenn Reynolds linked to a number of bloggers live-blogging the State of the Union address last night.

One of his readers brought up an interesting point:

Reader Rob Lain emails:

Others have probably done this already, but I just ran these numbers:

Obama SOTU 2010 First Person Singular Pronoun Count

“I” – 96 times
“me” – 8 times

Bush SOTU 2008 First Person Singular Pronoun Count

“I” – 39 times
“me” – 2 times

Think this may wind up correlating to their relative contributions to the national debt, when all is said and done?

I dunno, but what’s funny is that I think Obama was restraining himself here . . . .

I went back further and looked up Ronald Reagan's first State of the Union Address in 1982. His First Person Singular Pronoun Count is as follows:

“I” - 36 times
“me” – Once

Quite a difference between Obama's first SOTU Address and Reagan's. Both faced similar economic problems. Both faced foreign policy difficulties. But it appears to me that the focus of Obama's first SOTU Address was himself and not the rest of the nation, unlike Reagan.

The other big difference between the two? Obama is an orator. Reagan was a communicator.