Janet Harris: From Reagan to Romney: How Last Night's Speech Measured Up
Source: www.huffingtonpost.com - Friday, August 31, 2012
Over the past 32 years, speeches by Republican candidates accepting their party's nomination for president have differed in length, theme and tone. But even among these differences, Mitt Romney's speech last night stands out. For one thing, it had 41 percent fewer applause breaks compared to speeches by Romney's previous five predecessors: 1992 George H.W. Bush = 101 1996 Bob Dole = 101 2000 George W. Bush = 99 2004 George W. Bush = 104 2008 John McCain = 100 2012 Mitt Romney = 60 Granted, it was the shortest speech given by a Republican nominee since 1980, with just 4,089 words. The average speech given since 1980 had 4,707 words. But still, George W. Bush's speech as a challenger in 2000 had 0.6 percent more words than Romney's speech, but Bush got 65 percent more applause breaks. Ouch. The average length of Republican nominees' speeches also tended to be longer than Romney's because of the number of incumbent Republican presidents during the past 32 years. Incumbents gave nomination acceptance speeches in 1984 (Ronald Reagan), 1992 (George H.W. Bush) and 2004 (George W. Bush), and it turns out that incumbent presidents like to talk longer -- 436 words longer, in fact. Romney's speech differed from his predecessors' in other ways as well. He mentioned his opponent's name far more frequently, uttering President Barack Obama's name 15 times (although two of these were "Obamacare" references). The closest any other Republican nomiAmazon’s next Kindle e-reader will have a “Paperwhite” backlit display
Source: www.theverge.com - Friday, August 31, 2012
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