As late as 1900, the typical presidential speech employed college-level complexity. By the 1930s, that complexity had fallen to high-school level, and today, presidential speeches are simple enough for sixth graders. That’s according to a recent study that analyzed hundreds of presidential speeches from Washington to Obama with the Flesch-Kincaid test, a U.S. Navy measure used to code the readability of military instruction manuals. More specifically, presidential rhetoric suddenly shed its sesquipedalian sheen in the early 1900s. Er, it got simple real quick.
What happened? Twin revolutions in American suffrage and communications tech. In 1913, the U.S. added a 17th Amendment, which allowed for the direct election of senators; and in 1920, the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. Over the next decade, a new invention, the radio, entered more than 50 percent of U.S. households, allowing presidents to reach audiences several orders of magnitude larger (and more diverse) than they were used to. As the electorate become more populous, political speech become more populist.
Since the turn of the 20th century, successful presidents have recognized that mastering emerging communications technology was central to reaching potential voters, and therefore to their political fortunes.
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