This week promises to have numerous sources available for scrutiny. I currently have plans to examine New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's recent State of the State address. A manual test suggested an interesting strategy--that Gov. Richardson's address is tailored such that he begins squarely in one ideological camp, coasts through another in the middle of the speech, and finishes with a third preference. I have yet to run it through the instrument, however, because I still need to convert the document from .pdf to .txt .
Based on the perceived ideological movements in Richardson's speech an examination of the State of the Union address tomorrow might need to include a higher resolution for its sampling frame, i.e. a record of LEO signatures per paragraph or major section. I suspect that a closer look at segments of speech should reveal something about the preferences the speaker wants audiences to remember vs. the overall tenor of the speech. (Richard Cheney's RNC 2004 speech was particularly instructive about appearances and the 'effective truth'.) However, since I have not expressly used this technique before, any comparison to past addresses by the President should only involve the total score.
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