"The Smartest Man Ever" Pres Obama's SOTU Speech ranked as 4th LOWEST Grade Level since FDR!

Text of Obama's Address has a readability score for an average 8th grader - two grades lower than George W. Bush's Addresses and the historical average for modern presidents. However, a Smart Politics analysis of nearly 70 oral State of the Union Addresses since the mid-1930s finds the text of Obama's speech on Wednesday evening to have one of the lowest scores on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test ever recorded by a U.S. President.

Smart Politics ran the Flesch-Kincaid test on each of the last 68 State of the Union Addresses that were delivered orally by presidents before a Joint Session of Congress since Franklin Roosevelt. Excluded from analysis were five written addresses (Truman in 1946 and 1953, Eisenhower in 1961, Nixon in 1973, and Carter in 1981) and two addresses that were delivered orally, but not by the President himself (Roosevelt in 1945, Eisenhower in 1956). Prior to FDR, most, but not all, such Addresses were delivered in writing. Obama's Flesch-Kincaid grade level score of 8.8 for his first State of the Union Address was the fourth lowest score since FDR's first Address in 1934.

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Rank	President	Words per sentence	Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
1	Kennedy	23.8	12.0
2	Eisenhower	20.5	11.9
3	Nixon	23.5	11.5
4	Roosevelt	24.3	11.4
5	Ford	19.3	11.2
6	Carter	19.7	10.8
7	Truman	18.9	10.5
8	Johnson	20.3	10.4
8	Georgw W. Bush	19.0	10.4
10	Reagan	19.6	10.3
11	Clinton	19.0	9.5
12	Obama	16.6	8.8
13	Bush 41	17.4	8.6

Data compiled by Smart Politics.