HOOVER IS HIGHEST & TRUMP IS LOWEST IN GRADE-LEVEL SPEAKING
In an article published in Newsweek last year, Presidents of the United States from Herbert Hoover to Donald Trump were analyzed as to the grade level of their oral communications with the public.
The article, by Nina Burleigh, reports that the analysis was based on "the first 30,000 words each president spoke in office" using the Flesch-Kincaid scale* and other common tests.
The analysis "excluded communiques issued by the last two presidents on social media and limited the study to unscripted words" from press conferences and other events.
Here are the results of the study...
POTUS GL^
Hoover 11.3
Carter 10.7
Obama 9.7
Ford 9.4
Ike 9.4
Nixon 9.4
Clinton 9.3
JFK 8.8
Reagan 8.0
LBJ 7.6
FDR 7.4
GW Bush 7.4
GHW Bush 6.7
Truman 5.9
Trump 4.6
^score of 10-11 - fairly difficult to read
8-9 - plain English
6-7 - easy to read
5 - easy to understand for an 11 year old
JFK+50 COMMENT
Taking these results as accurate, one could argue that because both Presidents Hoover and Carter are considered by many historians to have not been successful in communicating their ideas with the public and since both experienced crises of confidence and defeat for re-election, speaking at a higher grade-level is not necessarily productive.
Also, three of the most successful communicators as POTUS: FDR, JFK and REAGAN are rated average to below average in grade-level speech. Perhaps they were better understood by the American public?
*The Flesch-Kincaid Readability Tests are designed to show the level of difficulty to understand a passage in English. The tests were designed by Rudolf Flesch and J. Peter Kincaid in 1975 for use by the U.S. Army in determining the difficulty of their technical manuals.
SOURCE
"Fourth-Grade Level, Lowest of Last 15 U.S. Presidents, New Analysis Finds," by Nina Burleigh, January 8, 2018, Newsweek, www.newsweek.com/
