Counting Words to Assess Priorities

Obama Speech Breakdown
Counting the president's words to assess his priorities

by Mark Impomeni

President Obama’s much hyped Oval Office address on the Gulf oil disaster is being roundly criticized from the left and the right as lacking in substance and leadership on the spill but full of presidential inaction on the cleanup. An analysis of the number of words the president devoted to the four general topics of the speech shows that the critics are right.

The problem seems to be in Obama’s priorities, as the word count shows. This was not a speech about the oil spill, the aftermath, or recovery in the Gulf. It was largely a sales pitch for Obama’s “green energy” agenda.

Obama spoke close to 2,700 words in his first Oval Office address, which can be separated into four broad themes: an update the oil spill and clean up efforts; the impact on the Gulf region; a history of regulatory ineffectiveness (Bush bashing); and the case for his “green energy” agenda.

Here is how the sections breakdown in words spoken on each:

• 345 words blaming Bush
• 418 words on the impact to Gulf region
• 778 words on the oilspill and cleanup efforts
• 863 words on Obama’s “green energy” agenda

Clearly, the president’s number one priority in making this speech was to make the case for his high tax, command and control, lifestyle changing, carbon regulating energy plan.

Moreover, Obama placed his 863 words on “green energy” at the end of his address. In so doing, the president organized the speech on the principles of inductive logic - in which the bad news comes first in order to soften the impact of the proposed solution.

Everything which comes before his pitch for “green energy” is properly seen, then, as support for Obama’s proposal. The crisis, the impact, the lives of those affected, all props in Obama’s drive to remake the nation’s energy policy.

Last night, Obama revealed himself to be nothing more than a snake-oil salesman. He knows that the public does not want his energy-limiting scheme, but he is determined to force it on America using the worst environmental tragedy in the nation’s history as the hook. Never let a crisis go to waste.