That being said, there is an effort in politics to "dumb down" speeches in the last few years to reach a bigger audience. They still speak at high school level though.

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/state-of-the-unio...

>Obama's use of simple language is in part a reflection of his audience: the American voter in an election year. And it's part of a larger trend in simpler State of the Union language as the speech as transitioned from a simple address to Congress into a prime-time televised event.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/21/study-congre...

>A new study by the Sunlight Foundation found that Congress speaks at an average grade level of 10.6, equivalent to a sophomore in high school. That number is down from 2005, when Congress' 11.5 speaking level was in line with a high school junior.

>"We do it on purpose," Mulvaney said of himself and his other freshman Republicans. "People have been teaching this for decades. If you want someone to understand your message, you speak clearly and concisely."

EDIT: I went to the New York Times homepage and picked the first article I saw. It was this: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/world/europe/ukraine.html?... I than ran it though a readability score analysis: https://readability-score.com/ It was written about at an 11th grade level.