Convention Speeches- Details Details and more Details

As anyone whose read this blog long enough knows, I’m a bit of political junkie. I’m also a serious student of Rhetoric and Speech. I loves me a good speech. Election years are my glory. Tons of great rhetoric and campaign crap to think about… so with that in mind I’ve gone ahead and provided you with some outstanding sleep aids..

The Sank Convention Speech Score Card.

Here the methodology for my analysis. I took each acceptance speech given by each of the candidates the last couple of weeks. For each line I assigned it a value for which issue it was addressing. Now realized that here many many lines which don’t really address anything, those are typically either biographical background OR they’re giving what I term Party Speak.. lines designed to rally the faithful, but don’t really provide us with any details on what it is going to do. They are politicians after all.

After the issue I assigned a value between 3 and -3 in each of two columns, Lib and Con.. the rather subjective assignment was.. if the statement was a strongly in the liberal camp, it got a 3. Chances are that statement would also piss off conservatives, which would give it a -3. Example. “I support Gay marriage.” That would be a 3 for most Liberals and a -3 for Conservatives. There were several statements that might get support from both philosophies. For example “I pledge to cut taxes on the Middle class by 20%.” Well that might get a 3 from the Cons and 2 from the Libs.. My thought is by summing up the totals you get a better picture about who was appealing to who in a way that was a bit more objective than just what “That’s what it felt like to me..”

The next analysis was four flags. 1- does this statement need verification? In other words, did they lay out some fact ? I considered a fact something like “Barak Obama will raise taxes on the middle class” or “John McCain has voted 19 times against raising the minimum wage.” That’s a fact we need to check out.

The next flag.. is it true or not true. If I knew, or could easily find out, I have it a yes, no or sort of..

The next flag was “How ya gonna do it ” I wanted to know, when you make a statement that your going to support the troops, or your going to expand the energy resources of the country, but you don’t tell us how you’re going to do it? You get a Yes in that column.

Last flag is, is this a personal attack. If the statement was an attack, “our opponent is not qualified..” then the answer is yes. If it’s a veiled attack, or maybe an inferred attack it was Sort of, if the candidate praised his opponent, it was a No. Everything else was a blank.

Finally there’s one thing I can’t measure, but it’s delivery style. Since I can’t quantify how the candidates delivered their speeches, I decided to just rank them in order of how well they did on the delivery.

So, With all this BS in mind, here it is; the sort of non-subjective subjective Sank Convention Speech Analysis for your humble consideration. No children were killed in this effort so get over it already.

The Speech Rankings

How did the candidate do in their speeches? This was tough because I’m partisan. I admit it. But I did my very best, consulted my friends on the other side and came up with the following:

1. Sarah Palin- This hurts, as I was offended by most of what she had to say. But, after considering what went on.. I have to concede, she did what she was supposed to and hit a home run.. She rallied the conservative wing of the party who were pretty lukewarm on old John McCain at best. She was cutting, a bit angry when she needed to be.. Looking at the speeches I think one insight I can gain.. She had more lines in her speech than any other candidate, but far more of her line very short simple sentences. Concise, direct and driving the point home. A criticism of Sarah- she offered no ideas or plans on how or what she was going tod.
2. Barak Obama- He was fantastic as well. He also did exactly what he needed to do, hit the home run, rallied the troops.. He addressed every issue the Republicans have been throwing at him from day one. And, he did it with a confident delivery style that worked well. Barak was no where near as aggressive at Sarah Palin was, but he did make his point and delivered the goods.
3. John McCain- Johns speech was a the quiet approachable speech we expected from the candidate. Let the Veep do the bulldog bit, John was going after the undecided voters. In that respect he did it well, but he spent way to much time on the Bio.
4. Joe Biden was the big loser in this game. His speech was some old style rhetoric. Joe dig deep on the Foreign Policy, as that is one of his areas of expertise, and the reason he was added to the ticket if you believe the pundits .

The Raw Data-

How much was true, or wasn’t true?

Table 1- How many times did each candidate make a statement that was true/not true or half true?

Interesting that Sarah Palin was the big loser in this respect. She got into trouble on a couple things. First of all, the bridge to nowhere. Ms. Pahlin was actually for the bridge when she ran for Gov. She was against later when the publicity blew up. Ms Pahlin also lost some point on her claims that Barak was against drilling, he’s actually not, but not in the same way they are. She lost as well on her claims she balances the budget. Alaska hasn’t had a budget problem since the oil started flowing. She got good points for claims on standing up to Oil and to cutting taxes for Alaskans. Sarah Palins credentials on being a maverick are sound. She went after her own party to cut waste and I give her credit for that.

Big Joe gets lots of points for statements from the ground in Georgia, Iraq and Afghanistan. The man HAS been to those places and is recognized in the senate for his acumen in these areas.

What about those personal attacks that damn woman delivered…

This one surprised me. While Sara was a no slouch in her attacks on Obama, it was actually Biden who led the charge in going after McCain. In fairness Uncle Joe had a rhetorical string where he said three times over. John McCain was wrong, Barak Obama was right. Sarah’s attacks if you read them, are more cutting than his.. The candidates didn’t really make too many attacks,. They’re trying to recruit the middle ground after all and don’t want to appear divisive.

How many attacks did each candidate make?

What issues were mentioned and how many times.

This was interesting. The hot three are energy, economy and war. I would have thought they would have dominated. As it was, Leadership popped up on top, by a ton, for all candidates. McCain and Palin with far more mention as they’re in the process of making that the center of their campaign, the ability of their team to lead, and the inability of the opposition to do the same. Biden spoke far more about foreign policy that anyone else.

The bit of bad news for the Obama crowd, more than half of his statements were party rah rah, with no addressing of any specific issues. This reinforces the Republicans charge against him that he doesn’t have any substance. Dang it.

Issues- How many times were issues mentioned?

And finally the lib/con score.

What does this say Sank? It says that, in the scheme of things, Obama’s speech was far more partisan than McCains or Palins for that matter. As a matter of fact, it would appear here that McCains was the most bi-partisan. Both because it was the least offensive to the other side, and the least rah rah to the partisan crowd. Barak must have pissed off some conservatives when I wasn’t looking.

The Results are

There are no results. This is a BS analysis by some fat old dumbass amateur. But there are some interesting insights to be gleaned from this. If this was a debate, I’d have to give the nod to McCain Pahlin, with a lot of grudge. But it’s not, and debates will come. Strap yourselves in folks and away we go.

If you’re interested in the raw data let me know, I’m not sure how to share it on WordPress.. but I’ll try.