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Comment by Locke | Hacker News Reader

I think it's fascinating how interested people are in quantitative analysis of speeches. How many times did he use the word "I". Which president said "I" the fewest times in an inauguration speech? What's the tag cloud look like.

Obama gave a beautiful speech today -- no doubt the use of language and delivery are a large part of that, but I find the beauty of his speeches is in the ideas.

Too often politicians fall back on flowery, patriotic language that lacks meaning and substance. Obama's speeches seem, to me, full of purpose and direction. They clearly communicate values, priorities, and objectives.

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You have to give some points to his speech-writer magicians.

I don't know who wrote this speech, but that person is very good at getting the points across that his administration wanted the people to hear -- but could also could hear Obama speaking.

But you are right -- this will go down in history as a historic and elegant speech.

There was a post about him here a few weeks ago http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/fashion/20speechwriter.htm...

What I find interesting is that no single word jumps out as much as "freedom" for Bush or "government" for Reagan or "new" for Clinton. This is consistent with what you are saying, Obama is not trying to drive home a single word or concept to "brand" his Presidency, he is actually explaining where he thinks the country is and where it needs to go.

My favorite part was the line about "putting aside childish things." It was a short but powerful dig at the last two decades (at least) of partisan politics. Grow up, get past the childish name calling, and get to work on solutions to our considerable problems.

That was the first thing that jumped out at me as well. One might have thought "change" would get that, but no, it was a balanced speech. Regardless of what happens in the next few years, a great start

I stayed up til the wee hours of this morning to watch Obama's inaugural speech (It occured around 2:10am for me) and I must admit I was impressed and saddened at the same time.

Impressed that you Americans are getting a leader who is inspiring and I hope he does great things for your country (so congratulations!)

Also I was saddened, as Australian politics is in a pretty poor shape right now, which we substituted an aging Prime Minister who kept our economy in good working order for a dud PM. Shame.

Where do I sign up to work hard to help a great nation?

Obama's most prominent word is "nation." Perhaps with the added benefit of hindsight, we can attribute more specific meaning to "nation" as we do with the terms highlighted in the previous inaugural addresses.

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