For those of you who worry about such things, Obama’s eagerly-awaited acceptance speech last night at the Democratic Convention in Denver, Colorado, was more positive than negative.
How did I determine that? By using the Apelquist System for Widely-Acceptable Guessing, more commonly referred to as “A SWAG.”
Seriously, I studied Obama’s speech transcript (95 paragraphs), and judged whether each paragraph was Positive in tone, Negative, or Neutral.
Here are two (2) examples of what I considered Neutral, one with which most of you would likely agree; the other some may view as borderline. “These are the policies I will pursue. And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain.” [Paragraph 69] “So I’ve news for you, John McCain: We all put our country first.” [72]
As for Positive examples, here are two, with the same qualifiers as above. “Our government should work for us, not against us.” [37] “We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.” [74]
And now for the Negative examples: “Why else would he [McCain] define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a year?” [21] “This country’s more decent than one where a woman in Ohio on the brink of retirement finds herself one illness away from disaster after a lifetime of hard work.” [12]
The above should give you an idea of my prejudices and ratings system. I judged as Negative anything that portrayed gloom and despair, regardless of whether some may believe, as in the “Ohio woman” citation, that such an utterance is merely a statement of fact for that particular individual. In any case, I consider anything that offers up a negative picture or circumstance, akin conceptually to Obama’s reference in paragraphs 19 and 20 that (former) McCain adviser Phil Gramm referred to “a nation of whiners,” to be fodder for the Negative pile. Nobody wants to be called a whiner.
There were two other categories, which are so-called “memo counts,” because the paragraphs were already labeled as Positive, Negative or Neutral. They are Specific and Attack. The titles are fairly clear. Below are examples of when Obama made a Specific proposal or spoke what political operatives (or even maybe real people) would consider an Attack against John McCain or the Bush Administration, especially since a key to Democratic victory is convincing voters that a McCain presidency would be Bush III.
Specific: “…I will cut taxes – for 95 percent of all working families…” [43] “I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean-coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power.” [47]
Attack: “…the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third.” [15] “If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice…” [65]
With all the disclaimers out of the way, here is my final tally for the speech.
I will do the same analysis of John McCain in the next few days.
I bet you simply cannot wait.
NOTE: Here is the speech through a subscription service, if you would like to do your own count.
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Fred W. Apelquist, III, M.Ed.
Approximately 550 words.
© August 29, 2008
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