Obama spreads economic sunshine

When reviewing speeches, it's interesting to look at word counts, the idea being that the number of times a speaker says a word can reveal the basic meaning of the speech.

In last night's address, the President said "economy" or "economic" 30 times, but never said the word "stimulus." Keeping his focus on specifics, he mentioned "jobs" 19 times, "budgets" 14 times, and "recover" 15 times, but only said the dreaded word "spending" twice. "Wall Street" snuck into his speech twice, "middle class" made its way in once, "earmarks" came in once, and "pork" had nary an appearance. The President said "confidence" seven times, and "deficit" nine times (although he generally attached it to words like "cut" or "pay down"). The same goes for the dreaded t word -- "tax" came into the speech 16 times, usually attached to some version of the word "cut."