President Obama has plenty of policy proposals for the coming year to deal with issues like education, medicine, immigration, gun violence, gender equality, and the minimum wage. But delineating those proposals was not the point of the President's eighth and final State of the Union address Tuesday night.
Instead, the address was both a victory lap, celebrating the accomplishments of the last seven years, and a condemnation of what President Obama perceives to be alarmist rhetoric being used on the campaign trail over the last several months. He said those who argue the economy is crumbling and foreign enemies are gaining ground are "peddling fiction" and full of "hot air."
"The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It’s not even close," President Obama said.
Pundits have hailed it as one of the most optimistic State of the Union addresses of Obama's presidency, but a closer look at the data says otherwise. Yes, the speech offered an overarching message of hope, but it only achieves that message by spending a long time discrediting so much of the negativity that clouds American politics today. That's why, according to natural-language-processing firm Trajectory, President Obama's Tuesday night address was neither his most positive nor his most negative but smack dab in the middle, the reflection of an ambitious presidency ending at a most tumultuous time.
WIRED asked Trajectory to analyze all of President Obama's State of the Union addresses. They are compared below.1
Trajectory's analysis model ingests text and scores words based on how positive or negative they are to paint an overall picture of that text. The company's analysis found that while Tuesday's speech may not have been the most optimistic of any of President Obama's addresses, it did end on a higher note than any address before it, and that's saying something, considering President Obama's speeches all follow that pattern.
After explaining his vision of the future---one that is inclusive of all races and religions and free of vitriolic politics---President Obama laid out a list of everyday Americans who he says convince him that such a future is possible, from soldiers to students to young immigrants.
"That’s the America I know. That’s the country we love. Clear-eyed. Big-hearted. Optimistic that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word," he said. "That’s what makes me so hopeful about our future. Because of you. I believe in you. That’s why I stand here confident that the State of our Union is strong."
But there were lows, too. The most negative point occurred when President Obama conceded that al Qaeda and ISIL do pose "a direct threat" to US citizens. "[I]n today’s world, even a handful of terrorists who place no value on human life, including their own, can do a lot of damage," he said. "They use the Internet to poison the minds of individuals inside our country; they undermine our allies."
Tuesday night's address may not have been President Obama's most hopeful, but it may be the most representative of his presidency---a presidency of peaks and valleys in which every success has been preceded and followed by a hard fought struggle.
Below, we've pulled some of the highlights from Trajectory's analysis of all President Obama's State of the Union speeches, but you can play around with the tool yourself, here.
You might assume that after President Obama's "hope and change" campaign in 2008 that his first State of the Union address would be his most optimistic. Quite the opposite. Trajectory's analysis shows that the 2009 address dips much lower into negative territory than any of his later addresses, and it never soars quite as high.
It stands to reason. In 2009, the country was still in the depths of the recession, and in his first State of the Union, President Obama did not attempt to sugarcoat that fact. He spoke frankly about the credit and lending crisis the country was facing. One of the lowest points in any of the addresses occurs in this speech, around the time the President explained the domino effect that led to that crisis.
"Too many bad loans from the housing crisis have made their way onto the books of too many banks. With so much debt and so little confidence, these banks are now fearful of lending out any more money to households, to businesses, or to each other," he said. "When there is no lending, families can’t afford to buy homes or cars. So businesses are forced to make layoffs. Our economy suffers even more, and credit dries up even further."
It should come as no surprise, then, that, according to Trajectory's model, words like "layoff" and "lending" were among the most important words used in this speech. "Important," in this case, doesn't mean most commonly used words, but instead, the words that are used in a uniquely prominent way in that piece of text, compared to other pieces of text.
By 2010, the focus on the economy was still strong, with President Obama discussing the stimulus bill, tax cuts, and how banks could repay their debts following the 2008 bailout. But another theme that first surfaces in that speech is one that has continued to follow President Obama through all his years in office: division.
It's the most important keyword by far in that speech, reflecting just how much President Obama learned about the intransigent partisanship of Washington during his first year in office.
There was one empty chair at the President's third State of the Union address, reserved for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in Tuscon, Arizona less than three weeks before the address. The tragedy had hit home in Washington, convincing members of Congress to try to put aside their differences for one night. That year, they even mixed up the seating chart, with Republicans and Democrats sitting next to each other, instead of on either side of the aisle.
It was in this environment that President Obama gave by far his most positive and optimistic address. "[T]here’s a reason the tragedy in Tucson gave us pause," he said at the time. "Amid all the noise and passion and rancor of our public debate, Tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater -– something more consequential than party or political preference."
All of President Obama's speeches end on a high note, but his 2011 address had the honor of ending on the highest note of all until last night's beat it out. The 2011 speech concluded with the story of a Pennsylvania small business owner, whose drilling company helped free 33 men trapped in a Chilean mine. "The idea of America endures. Our destiny remains our choice," the President said. "And tonight, more than two centuries later, it’s because of our people that our future is hopeful, our journey goes forward, and the state of our union is strong."
In his 2012 address, President Obama was quick to delineate all of the accomplishments he'd made during his first term. It was an election year, after all. Which is why he led with two of the biggest accomplishments of the prior year: the end of the Iraq War and the death of Osama Bin Laden.
"For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq," he said. "For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country."
Another mass shooting rocked the nation in December 2012, when 20 children and six adults were gunned down inside Sandy Hook Elementary School. Two months later, President Obama delivered his address. But unlike he did after the Tuscon shooting, President Obama did not call for unity in Congress this time. Instead, he called for legislation to address gun violence in front of an audience that included more than two dozen victims of gun violence.
"They deserve a vote. Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote. The families of Oak Creek and Tucson and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence---they deserve a simple vote. They deserve a simple vote."
Months later, that vote came when the Senate struck down a bipartisan gun control bill. Still, this State of the Union address set the stage for a battle President Obama is still fighting today.
President Obama's 2014 address reveals a shift in focus from domestic affairs to foreign affairs. The words "bomb" and "diplomacy" feature prominently, referring to the US's diplomatic efforts to end Iran's nuclear program. The name "Cory," repeated again and again, refers to a veteran who was injured while serving in Afghanistan.
Rebekah Erler featured prominently in President Obama's penultimate address last year.
Erler had written to the President about how she and her husband Ben weathered the economic downturn and came out on the other side. “It is amazing what you can bounce back from when you have to," President Obama said, reciting from Erler's letter. "We are a strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some very, very hard times.”
President Obama referenced Erler's words throughout his speech, applying them to the country at-large, ending the speech on a soaring note.
"My fellow Americans, we, too, are a strong, tight-knit family. We, too, have made it through some hard times," he said. "Fifteen years into this new century, we have picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, and begun again the work of remaking America. We have laid a new foundation. A brighter future is ours to write."
And now, with his last State of the Union address behind him, that brighter future is soon someone else's to write.
1* Correction 01/13/2016 11:19 AM EST: An earlier version of this story included an erroneous graph provided by Trajectory. The company mistakenly included HTML in its original analysis of last night's speech, which shifted the results. The data has been cleaned up and the story has been updated accordingly.*
