McCain’s Speech (Updated)

I’m sorry to say I fell asleep during Sen. McCain’s speech last night. That’s not a comment just a statement of fact. It might have something to do with having risen at 4:30am and worked a twelve hour day.

Possibly bolstered by his Pacific timezone location Joe Gandelman didn’t fall asleep and, as usual, he has the best round-up of reaction around. You might go there to take a gander at the range of commentary.

I began reading blogs in fall of 2003, spending most of my time at Winds of Change and the now-defunct Tacitus, both of which are in my blogroll at the right. I believe that it was in a comments thread at Tacitus in late 2003 that I made the observation, derided considerably at the time, that in 2008 both Democratcs and Republicans would be running against George W. Bush.

This year’s political conventions offer notable evidence that’s exactly what’s happening. They say that a picture is worth 1,000 words. I’ll offer three. Courtesy of the fascinating visualization site Many Eyes, here are visualizations, based on word frequency, of the acceptance speeches of Sen. Obama, Gov. Palin, and Sen. McCain.

Sen. Obama’s Acceptance Speech

Gov. Palin’s Acceptance Speech

Sen. McCain’s Acceptance Speech

You can click on any of the visualizations for a larger image.

Note the prominence of President Bush in Sen. Obama’s speech (and how he’s conjoined with Sen. McCain) and his absence or near absence from Gov. Palin’s and Sen. McCain’s. GWB may not have attended either convention but he was definitely there.

Update

I have corrected the visualization for the McCain acceptance speech. I had inadvertently saved the visualization of the Palin speech under the McCain speech visualization file name.

13 comments… add one
  • The Palin and McCain graphics are the same, which I don’t think is correct.

  • Notice the absence of Obama’s name in either Palin or McCain’s speech as well…

    He really is becoming “he who shall not be named.”

    Hmmm…Obama’s speech goes after Bush and McCain repeatedly, and his speech was about “bringing the country together”?

    Ah well….

  • Ah didnt see Chris’ comment. They are the same. I’m assuming they are both Palin’s.

  • PD Shaw Link

    I watched it and don’t remember a word of it.

    What stood out were the visuals. The straight-ahead shots with the blue screen in the background reminded me of a bad tv news set from the 70s. The side view with him in and among the crowd reminded me of earlier times when politicians stood on the soap box in the middle of a crowd and spoke. Probably meant to look like Teddy Roosevelt.

  • Tad Link

    http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/view/SWhH8QsOtha6v70QvCcAQ2~

    for McCain’s comments, Obama’s name shows up there

  • Chris:

    Thanks. Fixed.

  • Tad:

    Thanks. True, but certainly not with the same emphasis.

  • What? No Biden?

  • Oddly enough, FP Passport did the same thing. See here.

  • A coincidence, I can assure you, NYkrinDC. I barely had time to cobble this post together this morning.

    I omitted the Biden speech not out of any animus but only because the visualization for it wasn’t readily available.

  • Nice work. I put together the clouds on FP passport, (well, really Wordle did), and I left out the common words. Yours are a bit more comprehensive including interesting words like “great” “will” “man” etc.

  • Hey Dave,

    I didn’t meant to imply anything by that, I was just letting you know that they had also done a cloud for the speeches as well. Sorry, if you thought I implied otherwise. 🙂

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