Not only do the 2016's candidates for president act like sixth graders, they sound like sixth graders, too, study shows.

No one politician comes unscathed from the recent study on the speech and grammatical patterns of various politicians from the 2016 election--except for Abraham Lincoln, who isn't around to run. But we'll get to him in a second.

"A Readability Analysis of Campaign Speeches From the 2016 US Presidential Campaign," published this week by Carnegie Mellon University, looked to analyze the reading level of speeches given by the prospective 2016 presidential candidates and found that the group of them largely falls into the 6th-to-8th grade range.

That's shameful and embarrassing and pathetic. And it's also very close to the same reading level of where this blog resides. That said, I'm not running to be a fairly awkward individual with the power to rule hundreds of millions of people. I'm just running to be your number one blog for random stuff, like Herman Hesse hiking mountains in the nude. I also know how to write like a research wonk, super-heavy on a polysyllabic craziness and jazzy punctuation, but you'll be bored, doze off, and--oh, hey, is that Ray Bradbury shirtless, too?

(That crap I just wrote above, that one paragraph you just read right there ↑↑↑↑? That gets a 9.1 grade level through various testings, like the Flesch-Kincaid Scale, on this site. If my drivel can enter the high school realm, imagine what Trump is pushing.)

This is all to say that politicians dumb down and pander to Americans because it works, although some are worse than others. Bernie Sanders wants you to have a high school education, so he speaks at a tenth grade level, says Carnegie Mellon. Donald Trump? More like a grade 5.7. Which one looks to have a better shot at winning the election?

This all brings us back to Abraham Lincoln--specifically, to the Gettysburg Address. Potentially the greatest speech in American history, it still maxes out just over a 10th grade level grammatically, and 9th grade for vocabulary. Yet, despite such modest levels, Lincoln would surpass all of today's politicians.

Does this mean I sound like Abraham Lincoln when I talk?

God, no.

But does it mean I sound smarter than a billionaire Sunkist orange with pigs-in-a-blanket for fingers?

Yessss.

The Gettysburg Address is 150 years old today.

In ten sentences, Abraham Lincoln did what no American politician, living or dead, is capable of accomplishing. He gave a speech that mattered.

In roughly 270 words (depending on the manuscript you use), Lincoln shared exactly how Americans felt at a time when the Civil War raged 150-years ago.

The featured orator that day at the Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg was a Mr. Edward Everett, who proceeded to give a 13,607 word speech. Lincoln was a secondary speaker.

If you're an American, you don't remember Everett or his speech. You do remember Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

150-years later, here's Lincoln's speech in its entirety.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Pennsylvania newspaper apologizes 150 years after the fact, says Gettysburg Address didn't suck after all.

In 1863, after Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, PA, panned the speech.

Said the newspaper in 1863:

"We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them, and that they shall be no more repeated or thought of."

Yeah, good luck with that.

Time changes opinions though, and so it changed the Patriot-News' view on things. The paper retracted their previous editorial opinion--150 years later.

Their thoughts in 2013:

"Our predecessors, perhaps under the influence of partisanship, or of strong drink, as was common in the profession at the time, called President Lincoln's words 'silly remarks,' deserving 'a veil of oblivion'. [...] In the fullness of time, we have come to a different conclusion. [...] The Patriot-News regrets the error."

No rush or anything.

Showing they really had their fingers on the pulse of history, the Patriot-News also stated in 1863 that "the Secretary of State is a man of note."

Yeah, I don't know who that was either.




photo: Patriot-News

Well aren't you a Chatty Charlie: Inauguration Day Speeches, Abraham Lincoln's 1865 Speech

With Inauguration Day upon us, let us look back on yesteryear when presidents actually wrote their own speeches and kept it pretty pithy.

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Edward Everett, a politician and educator chosen to deliver the featured oration at the Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg in 1863, offered up a smooth, casual 13,607 word speech. The Honorable Mr. Everett took over two hours to deliver his prepared words. Because why use one word when a thousand will do?

Abraham Lincoln's Dedicatory Remarks at Gettysburg came after Everett's speech that day. Lincoln wrote roughly 270 words (depending on which manuscript you count), and took a little over two minutes to deliver.

Today, Edward Everett's official address at Gettysburg is forgotten, whereas Abraham Lincoln's 270 words cut to the bone and are remembered to this day as one of America's greatest speeches--the Gettysburg Address.

Two year's later, Lincoln's second inaugural address (698 words) came within days of the the impending end of the American Civil War and six weeks before he was assassinated, but it, too, is considered one of the country's greatest speeches. Lincoln alone wrote it.

The speech in its entirety:

Fellow-Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

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A side note:

Little did Lincoln know that his soon-to-be assassin, John Wilkes Boothe, was in attendance that day. Such is life:

Photo: Wikipedia