Obama's Press Conference Answers Three Formal Grade-Levels Higher Than Bush's First

I copied each transcript into separate Word documents, deleted the intros and all reporter questions, leaving just the unscripted answers to all questions. Then I ran Word's readability tool.
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So, I just finished comparing the transcript of President Obama's first presidential press conference this evening with the very first one that former President George W. Bush conducted back on February 22, 2001.

I copied each full transcript into separate Word documents. After doing that, I deleted the introductions by both men (since those are largely or fully scripted) and then deleted all reporter questions from the transcripts. What you have left are simply the answers that each president offered, off-the-cuff and unscripted, to all questions.

Then I ran Word's readability tool.

Guess what?

Bush's answers were spoken at 7th grade level. Obama's at a 10th grade level.

Click here for the actual statistics.

Mark Nickolas is the Managing Editor of Political Base, and this story was from his original post, "Obama Press Conference Answers Three Grade-Levels Higher Than Bush's First"

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