Your parents went through a lot in coming up with your name.
Little did they know that what they decided to name you would forever brand you by others – simply because of who you are.
Tag: politics
Being President of the United States (or POTUS, if you like acronyms) comes with a lot of responsibilities, not the least of which is that your profile becomes highly raised. You’re going to be seen everywhere, from every angle. Video, photos – all living on forever.
So if you’re going to be President, you have to be sure to look your best. And be extremely charismatic, so you can get your job done. It’s called “politics” for a reason, folks, and being able to persuade people to do what you need them to do requires a ton of charisma.
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What’s your Secret Service code name?
Everybody has a nickname.
And as Howard learned on THE BIG BANG THEORY, nicknames are usually assigned to you rather than something that you come up with yourself. His nickname, if you hadn’t heard, is “Froot Loop”.
Have you ever considered going into politics?
Sure, there’s some fame and fortune involved, plus the added bonus of actually feeling like you’re giving something back to the community that you represent. This may work best in smaller cities and neighborhoods — being the president of your local Homeowners Association requires a completely different skillset than being the Mayor of your town.
Just like being Mayor requires different skills in some podunk town in the middle of nowhere than it does being Mayor of a major metropolitan city.
Face it – if too many cows on your byways is the biggest problem you have to deal with, then you’re not quite ready to attack the Major Politics of Today.
All that’s not to say that representing a small political arena is for dumb people, and only smart people can manuever around Big City or National politics.
But maybe there are some trends that can identify whether the person representing your best interests is as smart as they can be when compared to their compatriots.
For instance, according to SUNLIGHT LABS analysis of the members of congress and how they use language, they can identify who present themselves at a higher-intelligent level vs those in congress is try to talk to the lowest-common denominator.
Using some analysis of speeches that all Congressional members have made, they’ve been able to determine the grade level that each Congressman typically speak at.
From a trending perspective, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that as more and more years pass, Congressional speech patterns are getting worse and worse. Web Watch calls it the MTV Effect (or, to update for the 21st century – the YouTube Effect). Shorter attention spans and the rise of quick edit TV newscasts has resulted in what is – in effect – representatives that have lost the ability to sound like they’re talking intelligently.
They all may be extremely smart individuals. But they’re certainly not all presenting themselves that way.
Let’s look at the LOWEST RANKING CONGRESSIONAL MEMBERS and their level of grade school talk:
- Rep. Mick Mulvaney (SC) – 7th grade
- Rep Rob Woodall (GA) – 8th grade
- Rep Rand Paul (KY) – 8th grade
- Rep Sean Duffy (WI) – 8th grade
- Rep Tim Griffin (AR) – 8th grade
vs
- Rep Dan Lungren (CA) – 16th grade
- Rep Liculle Roybal-Allard (CA) – 14th grade
- Rep Jim Gerlach (PA) – 14th grade
- Rep Tom Petri (WI) – 14th grade
- Sen Daniel Akaka (HI) – 14th grade
(Just go with the grades higher than 12 to be collegiate level. Web Watch is just reporting what’s in the data, not making judgements on how its interpreted.)
Some of what the analysis shows is:
- Simple speech tends to come from those who speak more.
- Moderate members of Congress tend to speak at higher grade levels than do those members of Congress who would be considered more extreme.
- Newer members of Congress tend to speak to a lower grade level than those who’ve been in Congress longer
It’s soon coming up to another Presidential election – or, as we at Web Watch call it, “time to start hanging up on political robocalls again”.
So whether you liked how you voted last year, or are interested in making a change in your voting style, you may want to check out the POLITICAL TYPOLOGY QUIZ to see if your political leanings have changed since the last Presidential election.
With the next Presidential election already being talked about, Web Watch thought it was appropriate to remind all our readers of WHAT THE HECK OBAMA HAS DONE SO FAR.
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JFK: A Question of Character
According to a new Nixon biography, a named Kennedy aide is quoted about the following event during the John F Kennedy/ Richard Nixon debates:
When JFK arrived at the hotel, he went to his hotel suite. In order to prepare for his upcoming televised debate with Nixon, he requested a prostitute to be sent up to his room. One of his aides set up the meeting in JFK’s hotel room. JFK came out 15 minutes later, looking flushed and relaxed. This was how he prepared for the debates, and supposedly all of his televised appearances. This is how the book explains that JFK looked so calm and relaxed on television.