Now we're all in this together?

Having played the 'outsider' card heavily in 2008, Barack Obama is now the ultimate Washington insider: the President. And his speeches show that he's trying his hardest to overcome the problem. Over the next few months, we’ll be analysing the speeches of the US election campaign. This post looks at how Obama is positioning himself in his rhetoric.

Image from: http://browniemariepublishing.com/The-Brownie.html (28/06/12)

They say that obsession with an enemy leads you to become like them. Well, in this election campaign, Barack Obama is desperate to prove that he has not become the very people he took on in 2008.

Obama’s 2008 campaign was a masterpiece in whipping up grassroots support. And it creating a sense that he was being lifted up from everyday society towards the Washington, rather than a politicians who reaches out to the nation, of who embodies what an ‘everyman’ would be in Washington.

In 2012, he seems to be going even more for this vein (or, at least, less subtly). With the new campaign, Obama has avoided talking so much about himself - after all, his profile is already high enough, and people do feel they know him (though David Axelrod has banned any complacency on that score).

So, this time around, the stats of his speeches show us a few things. We are seeing far less about Obama, and more about ‘everybody’, ‘you’ and ‘we’. Some things are less of an issue now, and so we see fewer uses of ‘black’, ‘white’, ‘race’ and ‘racial’. However, we also see less use of ‘I’, and far fewer references to his opponent.

In their place, inclusive language is the order of the day: ‘you’, ‘we’re’, ‘folks’, ‘we’ve’, ‘everybody’. Obama seems to be trying harder than ever to prove that he is still the outsider in Washington. Many of you will remember the attacks he made on John McCain, claiming that McCain could not change Washington, because he embodied Washington. Well, now Obama is desperately trying to prove that he’s not become the very thing he was fighting.

Obama 2.0: It’s the economy, stupid! (but it wasn’t in 2008)

Over the next few months, we’ll be analysing the speeches of the US election campaign. To start off with, we’ll be comparing some of the early speeches of the two main candidates with each other, and their equivalents 4 years ago.

Image from: http://thecomingdepression.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/fundamentally-changing-america-obama.html (21/06/12)

   The biggest issue of both the upcoming and previous US election is obvious: the economy. So you’d expect it to feature prominently in Obama’s speeches of both campaigns. Yet, not only are economic words, terms and topics occurring far more frequently this time around: many appear for the first time.

  Much has been made of Romney’s pitch being as ‘America’s CEO’, and Obama’s early rhetoric for the campaign seems to respond to this. Words ‘debut-ing’ in his campaign lexis include ‘businesses’, ‘financial’, ‘investments’ and ‘growth’. And some of those on the right will no doubt feel rather gleeful and smug at the simultaneous introductions of ‘deficit’ and ‘trillion’. It seems Obama is incorporating more ‘business speak’ than 2008. He is certainly yet to reach the heights of soaring rhetoric we have seen from him. Perhaps the plan is to leave that for later, while establishing his economic capability to entrepreneurs, business leaders, and the more right-leaning economic thinkers. Interestingly, in 2008 Obama seemed uninterested in talk of ‘getting the economy moving’, and ‘moving’ itself appears for the first time.

   This introduction of ‘business speak’ is mirrored in the wider trend or speeches more focussed on the economy. ‘Cut’, ‘cuts’, ‘tax’, and ‘economy’ all appear more often this time around, as Obama shifts from inspiring to dependable - not to mention a greater emphasis on sustainable economics, and living within budgets. Of course, while this is partly down to the position of the economy and the nature of his opponent, it’s not unusual for the incumbent to talk about the economy. Firstly, it’s an ever-useful excuse for what the government hasn’t done; and secondly, at this moment some economists are saying positive things about parts of the US economy. Added to that, Obama played the 'outsider' card heavily in the last election, placing less emphasis on the issues themselves. There were policies, but it was personality that took precedent. Even when it was policy, it was more principles than programs. This time, Obama is known, and so he doesn't need to - and cannot - play the same game.

   

   This wooing of the centre-right will no doubt form a part of the Obama Camp’s dream scenario of leading the polls heading into the final straight, when (one imagines) they will shift to a more rousing tenor.

Either way, Obama seems to be taking on the (rather invisible) Romney on his own terms. For now.

Power to the people?

This is the third post in a short series analysing how the PM changed his rhetoric after he got into government. It compares how a number of themes are presented in his campaign speeches vs his early speeches as PM, based on close, statistical, lingusitic analysis.

Taken from: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=415741 (06/05/2012; 16:27)

'We can be a Government that always remembers we serve the people, we're the servants of the people we are never their masters and this if we are elected we will never, ever forget.'

- David Cameron, 5th May 2012

People are the masters. Politicians serve. Serving to lead. The electorate empowered. The ballot is boss. That’s very much the message David Cameron was evoking in the quotation above, and throughout his campaign in 2010. Indeed, in office he was still saying ‘[i]t's about holding our hands up saying we haven't got all the answers - let's work them out, together.’ Not quite the same, but the similar thought.

So is this what has come to define Cameron’s government? What do the early days, his words in his first year tell us? The previous quotation notwithstanding, there’s a shift.

Firstly, and perhaps fairly, Cameron moves away from any suggestion of the public having direct power. In his campaign he had used ‘if you’ a load of times - and only a small handful were ‘if you vote Conservative’ or ‘if you get a Conservative government’. Most of all, he talked about the people’s power to ‘change’ things ‘if you want’. All of this, along with with ‘you can’ and ‘you want’, nearly disappear after the election, as Cameron puts less emphasis on both possibility and people power.

Then, while ‘politicians’ appear alongside ‘serve’, ‘serving’ or ‘servants’ quite a few times pre-election, he never uses them together as PM. The same is true of ‘people’ and ‘masters’ - lots before, never after. What’s more, his calls to ‘hold us to account’ occur only as campaign rhetoric, and are dropped afterwards.

In fact, this ‘holding to account’ ties in with one of the big vanishing acts of Cameron’s speeches: his much-vaunted contracts. Cameron made 5 speeches specifically about these ‘contracts’, and at the first launch said ‘I urge people to read it, to hold us to it, to make sure we deliver it.’ It was a clear democratic tactic and offer to involve people more in politics - something which Cameron continually emphasized in this, and in his use of ‘invitations’.

So: how does that go for us? Well, surprisingly for such a massive chunk of the election campaign, it totally disappears. Totally. Utterly. In one speech Cameron refers to employers’ contracts with their workers - and this is the only use of the word in the twelve months after the election! The same is true for ‘invitation’: never used. And for ‘manifesto’.

Statistics are always a little tricky to be objective and substantiative with - but no mentions at all?? As a fan of Cameron’s ‘invitations’ and ‘contracts’ pre-election, I’m a little disappointed (if not that surprised) that it may all have been electoral bluster.

Comments always welcomed.