Simple ideas are often pure genius. I remember thinking that about the post-it note. After a lifetime of paperclipping notes to files, suddenly all you had to do was peel off a sticky and push it onto a surface. Genius. Sheer genius. And it made a fortune. Soft serve ice cream was another innovation that took off. Just put the cone to the machine and then flip it over into chocolate sauce to form a shell. Another fortune made. Likewise with the slippery baby oil bottle that was then made with grooves so you could get a good grip on it. This concept that the Lincoln Project came up with tonight is the same kind of genius. It’s so obvious — why did nobody do it until now? Including them?
Our Presidents used to speak like adults. Don't let a man who whines like a child ever hold that office again. pic.twitter.com/ay6GPi3Rcn
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 29, 2024
And we have heard that different presidents use the language at different levels. Harry Truman was criticized for speaking at a sixth grade level — why I don’t know, because newspapers are written to be understood by somebody with that level of education. But only Donald Trump has been accused of having a vocabulary of 200 words and using the language at the level of somebody 9 years old or younger.
Trump himself once said, “I’m the same person I was in the first grade.” I find that hard to believe, only because most of us find ourselves not having the luxury of being able to stay at a primitive level of our being. Life demands that we deal with life on life’s terms. But I guess some people do have the advantage — if it is an advantage — of having people buy their way in and out of situations that they could have never achieved on their own merit and Trump certainly fits that bill.
But look at what that advantage that has turned out to be? He’s facing criminal sentencing in a few weeks for a trial in which he was already convicted plus he’s got three more trials coming up after the election. He’s toast. He has no way to go but down and out.
All signs point to the end of Trump, not the least of which was the 75,000 souls that showed up at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. tonight to hear Kamala Harris speak — which is over 22,000 more people than came to hear Trump that fateful January day in 2021, if not the darkest day in our nation’s history, definitely a date that will always vie for the top five worst days.
It’s over. He’s over. The man is a total child. Thank you, Lincoln Project, for stating the obvious so eloquently.
“And we have heard that different presidents use the language at different levels. Harry Truman was criticized for speaking at a sixth grade level — why I don’t know, because newspapers are written to be understood by somebody with that level of education.”
I think Truman’s criticism came as much from his general background as anything else (much the same way Carter and Clinton were criticized for being “Southern outsiders”). But, at the same time, I’d be willing to bet the criticism was coming from papers that were written for people with much higher levels of education. The Wall Street Journal and even the New York Times, come to mind. (Even today, both publications are generally written at about the 8th to 10th grade levels. It should be noted that the Times will typically have sections that are much wider ranging but, it’s like with the crossword puzzles: The Monday puzzle is usually the easiest while the Sunday puzzle is typically the hardest to complete.)
Frankly, when I was in high school (back in the stone age of the late 70s), the rule of thumb that I heard was the average newspaper was written at a 4th grade level. But, that was supposed to include ALL newspapers, from the small-town weekly paper (which would usually feature reporting on local fires and school bake sales) and local daily papers to the prestige papers. Since there were far more of the former (until so many of them got bought up by major publishers only to be shut down because they weren’t profitable and were generally just reprinting articles from larger national papers), the average would, by necessity, be lower.
written at a 4th grade level and the piece having a length no longer than your average sh*t.
I remember reading that the average English teacher reads at a 9th grade level. We had SRA for reading comprehension in junior high. I.!aced it out halfway through the first report card period, which meant I read at the level.off a sophomore in college.