Posted on 10/12/2014 9:39:51 PM PDT by ConservativeStatement
NEW YORK, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- Vocativ recently decided to do a study of the sophistication of presidential speeches, from George Washington to Barack Obama, and found they've become less sophisticated over time. They analyzed over 600 speeches using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, which judges speech by assigning it to a grade level. All of their conclusions were analyzed by former Bill Clinton speech writer Jeff Shesol.
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
No sort of pun intended but:DUH!
You forgot “mother******”.
Yup, needed a teleprompter to speak to an elementary grade class.
Guess he was testing out a speech for his mentally challenged voters.
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON
Called from a retirement which I had supposed was to continue for the residue of my life to fill the chief executive office of this great and free nation, I appear before you, fellow-citizens, to take the oaths which the Constitution prescribes as a necessary qualification for the performance of its duties; and in obedience to a custom coeval with our Government and what I believe to be your expectations I proceed to present to you a summary of the principles which will govern me in the discharge of the duties which I shall be called upon to perform.
It was the remark of a Roman consul in an early period of that celebrated Republic that a most striking contrast was observable in the conduct of candidates for offices of power and trust before and after obtaining them, they seldom carrying out in the latter case the pledges and promises made in the former. However much the world may have improved in many respects in the lapse of upward of two thousand years since the remark was made by the virtuous and indignant Roman, I fear that a strict examination of the annals of some of the modern elective governments would develop similar instances of violated confidence.
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We admit of no government by divine right, believing that so far as power is concerned the Beneficent Creator has made no distinction amongst men; that all are upon an equality, and that the only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed. The Constitution of the United States is the instrument containing this grant of power to the several departments composing the Government. On an examination of that instrument it will be found to contain declarations of power granted and of power withheld. The latter is also susceptible of division into power which the majority had the right to grant, but which they do not think proper to entrust to their agents, and that which they could not have granted, not being possessed by themselves. In other words, there are certain rights possessed by each individual American citizen which in his compact with the others he has never surrendered. Some of them, indeed, he is unable to surrender, being, in the language of our system, unalienable.
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[T]he restricted grant of power to the Government which they have adopted, enough has been given to accomplish all the objects for which it was created. It has been found powerful in war, and hitherto justice has been administered, and intimate union effected, domestic tranquility preserved, and personal liberty secured to the citizen. As was to be expected, however, from the defect of language and the necessarily sententious manner in which the Constitution is written, disputes have arisen as to the amount of power which it has actually granted or was intended to grant.
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It may be observed, however, as a general remark, that republics can commit no greater error than to adopt or continue any feature in their systems of government which may be calculated to create or increase the love of power in the bosoms of those to whom necessity obliges them to commit the management of their affairs; and surely nothing is more likely to produce such a state of mind than the long continuance of an office of high trust.
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We could then compare our actual condition after fifty years’ trial of our system with what it was in the commencement of its operations and ascertain whether the predictions of the patriots who opposed its adoption or the confident hopes of its advocates have been best realized. The great dread of the former seems to have been that the reserved powers of the States would be absorbed by those of the Federal Government and a consolidated power established, leaving to the States the shadow only of that independent action for which they had so zealously contended and on the preservation of which they relied as the last hope of liberty.
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The spirit of liberty is the sovereign balm for every injury which our institutions may receive. On the contrary, no care that can be used in the construction of our Government, no division of powers, no distribution of checks in its several departments, will prove effectual to keep us a free people if this spirit is suffered to decay; and decay it will without constant nurture.
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It was the beautiful remark of a distinguished English writer that “in the Roman senate Octavius had a party and Anthony a party, but the Commonwealth had none.” Yet the senate continued to meet in the temple of liberty to talk of the sacredness and beauty of the Commonwealth ... and the people assembled in the forum, not, as in the days of Camillus and the Scipios, to cast their free votes for annual magistrates or pass upon the acts of the senate, but to receive from the hands of the leaders of the respective parties their share of the spoils...
The spirit of liberty had fled, and, avoiding the abodes of civilized man, had sought protection in the wilds of Scythia or Scandinavia; and so under the operation of the same causes and influences it will fly from our Capitol and our forums. A calamity so awful, not only to our country, but to the world, must be deprecated by every patriot and every tendency to a state of things likely to produce it immediately checked. Such a tendency has existed—does exist. Always the friend of my countrymen, never their flatterer, it becomes my duty to say to them from this high place to which their partiality has exalted me that there exists in the land a spirit hostile to their best interests—hostile to liberty itself. It is a spirit contracted in its views, selfish in its objects. It looks to the aggrandizement of a few even to the destruction of the interests of the whole. The entire remedy is with the people.
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres26.html
I agree. And that makes a president's scope of domestic issues to give a speech about, issues that the states have actually given the feds the constitutionally delegated power to regulate, even more limited.
Yes, that’s real. The circular rug he’s standing on? Even that is his. It’s not property of the school or a teacher. Must be his “Linus” security rug.
You realize that is the speech that killed him, right? Maybe not the best example to emulate.
He died because he spoke out for limited government and the nurturing of Liberty?
or his muslim prayer rug.
I liked it better when I couldn’t understand them..../s
He died because the Hero of Tippecanoe was far too macho to wear an overcoat or hat during his two-hour oration in a cold rain. He died of pneumonia after 31 days in office.
His was the longest inaugural address and the shortest presidency. The speech took up .26% of his entire presidency.
The circumstances of his passing are meaningless in regards to the content of the speech.
(I knew about the raincoat)
If that’s his prayer rug then his Imam must be Mr. al-Rogers.
Funny and sad at the same time.
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