Hillary Clinton’s official campaign launch speech was written at an eighth-grade level, a Vocativ analysis shows. At 46 minutes and 4,707 words, her speech was longer than any other candidate’s so far, but it was written for the average middle-schooler, according to the Flesch-Kincaid readability test—the most widely recognized reading comprehension algorithm.
The speech put Hillary in the middle of the field in terms of clarity from the podium. It was simpler than that of Clinton’s fellow Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, who spoke at a higher readability level than any other candidate so far. His speech, delivered in May, was the only one written at a 10th-grade level. Rick Santorum’s announcement speech, delivered in Butler County, PA, where he grew up, was the simplest of the lot, intelligible to smart sixth-graders and above, and just six words longer than Lindsey Graham’s.
The speech’s grade level was almost exactly on par with Clinton’s announcement that she would run in 2008. A previous Vocativ study of presidential State of the Union speeches revealed a general downward trend in speech sophistication since Woodrow Wilson’s administration. But Jeff Shesol, a former speechwriter for Bill Clinton, said that simplication is an attempt to make politics accessible to a broader swath of the population. “It’s tempting to read this as a dumbing down of the bully pulpit,” he told Vocativ then. “But it’s actually a sign of democratization.”
Hillary Clinton drew more than 5,000 people of every age, gender and color to New York’s Roosevelt Island on Saturday to announce her candidacy to become the next US president. Clinton spoke at length at how her mother’s devastating childhood is shaping up her run for the White House.
Read More
Obama’s State Of The Union Was Written For A 10th-Grader (Vocativ)
Most Commencement Speeches Are Written At Grade School Level (Vocativ)