Parsing Presidential Speeches

As an information visualization interface, word clouds are interesting. The trick is to make the data useful and meaningful at a glance. The wrong mix turns the data into a chaotic soup.

Chirag Mehta's US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud page is a good example. He parsed the most frequently used words in U.S. presidential speeches from John Adams (January 15, 1776: "Foundation of Government") to George W. Bush (January 23, 2007: "State of the Union Address"). His dataset consisted of over 365 documents from Encyclopedia Britannica, ThisNation.com, and WhiteHouse.gov. The results are a mini history lesson.

Some highlights...

• 1776 (John Adams) - assembly, constitution, representation
• 1789 (Thomas Jefferson) - freedom, opinion, federalist
• 1812 (James Madison) - war, British, militia
• 1823 (James Monroe) - respecting, independence, European
• 1847 (James Polk) - Mexico, war, territory, Texas
• 1862 (Abraham Lincoln) - labor, emancipation, slavery
• 1865 (Andrew Johnson) - rebellion, confederate, war
• 1898 (William McKinley) - Cuba, Spain, war, belligerency
• 1903 (Theodore Roosevelt) - corporations, Panama Canal, treaty
• 1917 - (Woodrow Wilson) - war, Germany, empire
• 1933 (Franklin D. Roosevelt) - economic, distress, industries
• 1935 (Franklin D. Roosevelt) - economic, unemployment, stabilization
• 1941 (Franklin D. Roosevelt) - dictators, freedom, strength, war
• 1945 (Franklin D. Roosevelt) - German, Japanese, scientists, offensive
• 1953 (Harry S. Truman) - Communist, Soviet, aggression, freedom
• 1962 (John F. Kennedy) - strength, freedom, education
• 1966 (Lyndon B. Johnson) - Vietnam, war, tax
  
• 1974 (Richard M. Nixon) - challenges, messages, Watergate
• 1979 (Jimmy Carter) - inflation, foundation, families
• 1985 (Ronald Reagan) - economic, freedom, God, tax
• 1991 (George Bush) - aggression, Saddam, Iraq, Kuwait
• 1995 (Bill Clinton) - deficit, families, crime, welfare
• 2005 (George W. Bush) - Iraq, terrorists, freedom, economy