UK: The silliness of partisan politics

PJ: The right-wing in the US is busy trying give Obama themselves credit (through Bush) for the demise of bin Laden. While people around the world have praised President Obama's speech outlining the killing of Osama bin Laden, many on the right have begun dissecting his speech, claiming that his use of pronouns proves that he is trying to take too much credit. But as this writer examines, President Obama historically uses such pronouns less than, or at least the same as, every other president.

The Economist

Presidential pronouns
Is it all about him?

OVER at the Corner, the main group blog of the National Review, two writers (Mark Steyn and Elliot Abrams) and many commenters have complained that Barack Obama was too free with the first-person singular last night; specifically, that his use of "I", "me" and "my" claimed too much credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden. Since Mark Liberman hasn't gotten to it yet as he usually does (their servers seem to be down at Language Log), here are my counts for Mr Obama's announcement:

I: 9
me: 2
my: 3

Is that a lot or a little, in 1,389 words in this context? It's hard to say, since these things don't get announced very often. In the 745 words George Bush used to announce the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, the totals were

I: 5
me: 1
my: 2

Numbers this small don't tell us much. But just a few more data points: here's Mr Obama with the first person plural:

we: 37
us: 7
our: 46

Raw counts of pronouns only get you so far; there are tone and context, and these don't lend themselves so easily to dispassionate analysis. For many people, whether you think Mr Obama was preening and attention-seeking or gracious and presidential has more to do with the letter D or R under "Registration" on your voter card than it does with anything else. I don't see a man obsessed with his own role here, but that's perhaps because I'm influenced by the history of Mr Liberman's counts. He has repeatedly found that Mr Obama uses the first-person singular less often than (or sometimes about as often as) other presidents and politicians.

Addendum: And in a variant, Andy McCarthy (also of the National Review) is complaining about too much "we"; specifically that "we" removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, according to Mr Obama. I think that further makes my point that with some people, the president's pronouns will never go right.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/05/presidential_pronouns