Obama: uma presidência com discurso menos alarmista

Gráfico analisa citações feitas nos discursos sobre a "situação da União" ("The state of the Union") dos presidentes Bush x Obama. Até 2008, Bush; de 2009 em diante, Obama:



De comum, ambos praticamente ignoram o Afeganistão:

"The two presidents spoke about terrorism in radically different ways, with Bush devoting long passages in each of his post-9/11 State of the Union addresses to the "manmade evil of international terrorism" and Obama remaining relatively tight-lipped about threats from abroad. In his four State of the Unions to date, Obama has mentioned "terrorists," "extremists," or "al Qaeda" an average of 4.5 times per speech -- compared with Bush's average of 33.1 in the post-9/11 era.

But if Obama has proved less inclined to histrionics -- in 2010 he went as far as warning Republicans to "put aside the schoolyard taunts about who is tough" -- his speeches actually have several surprising features in common with Bush's. The most notable similarity is silence on Afghanistan, where violence is higher than it was before the troop surge in 2010 and where the notoriously weak Afghan National Security Forces are expected to take over all combat operations by the end of 2014.

Ignoring Afghanistan has become something of a presidential tradition. With the exception of Bush's 2002 address, in which he mentioned "Afghan" or "Afghanistan" 14 times, America's longest war has been referenced only 4.8 times per speech, on average. Compare that to Iraq, which has been mentioned an average of 18.3 times per speech during the same time period".

Foreign Policy.

 
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