Obama’s schools speech had more ‘responsibility’ than Reagan’s

Minnesota’s Ed Morrissey offers a response to Barack Obama’s just-finished speech to school children, in part running the speech through a word-frequency counter. His findings: “Barack Obama referenced himself more than school, education, responsibility, country/nation, parents, and teachers combined.  And to think that people accused Obama of self-promotion!”

But as John Cole writes, Ronald Reagan’s speech to students had plenty of uses of the first person: 25 “I”-words compared to Obama’s 56. More telling though is how many times the two presidents used terms like “responsibility” (Obama 8, Reagan 0), “country”/”nation” (10 to 4), “parents”/”teachers” (5 to 0).

Morrissey’s premise is silly, of course, but using his logic, Obama beats Reagan in terms of those tenets conservatives suggest they’ve got a corner on — patriotism, personal responsibility and family.

CNN has video of the speech.