ANALYSIS | President Barack Obama's critics have frequently derided him for being long-winded and prone to making many demands for Congress to enact his laws. In fact, Yahoo records 5,200 more cases where "President Obama" is referred to as "long-winded" more than "President Bush" (both combined, no doubt).
Perhaps long speeches and congressional demands can be a proxy for "bigger government."
To examine whether Democrats are guilty of longer, pushier speeches, I look at the University of California at Santa Barbara's data from their American Presidency Project, developed by Jon Woolley and Gerhard Peters. One dataset includes the number of words in the State of the Union speeches. The other dataset includes presidential requests of Congress in the State of the Union speeches.
When looking at all presidents from Trman to Obama for the length of the speech, I find that the six Democratic Party presidents average 5,662 words in their State of the Union speeches, while the six Republican Party presidents average only 4,799 words per State of the Union speeches.
As for presidential requests from Congress, Democrats also make more of these. Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton combined for an average of 22.22 requests of Congress in their State of the Union speech. Republicans only averaged 18.434 requests of Congress from Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush (this dataset ran from 1948 to 1997).
I'm sure this information doesn't surprise anyone. We all assume those professorial types like Clinton and Obama would go on longer than the George Bushes, and Democrats want Congress to do more. But though there's a difference, it's only a slight one. Deeper analysis shows that the difference between the two average in words and requests is not statistically significant.
An examination of the data reveals that more recent U.S. Presidents actually provide longer speeches, and make more demands of the legislative branch, regardless of political party. George W. Bush gave longer speeches than his fellow Republicans, and even LBJ and Carter. Bush even averaged more congressional requests in his State of the Union speeches than even Clinton, by a hair. And Clinton and Obama provided longer speeches than their Democratic counterparts from earlier decades. As Americans increasingly demand more of their presidents, they can expect longer speeches and more calls for congressional action.
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