Obama thinks you’re dumb: college addresses at sixth grade reading level
The Washington Free Beacon reports,
Obama addressed the coeds at the Universities of North Carolina, Colorado, and Iowa at a sixth grade reading level, according to Flesch-Kincaid reading comprehension difficulty tests conducted by the Washington Free Beacon.
All three are swing states and young people were instrumental to Obama winning each of them in 2008. The timing and locations of the president’s remarks—which focused on student loan interest rates—sparked debate about whether they were campaign events or policymaking trips. . . .
Elvin Lim, an associate professor of government at Wesleyan University and the author of The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush, is not surprised that Obama has dumbed down his language.
“This is a guy who is a constitutional law professor, but the structure of the presidency is such that you have to go anti-intellectual,” he said.
The Washington Free Beacon assessed dozens of Obama speeches from different stages of his career using the Flesch-Kincaid method and found that the pattern of simple speeches did not start with his reelection campaign.
Since taking office, Obama has routinely spoken to the American people in a more simplistic manner than his predecessor, George W. Bush.