Acceptance Speeches: Obama vs. McCain

The website wordle.net allows you to take a collection of text and turn it into a "world cloud". The website uses a computer algorithim which gives greater prominence to the words that appear the most in the text. Below are the word clouds I created from the acceptance speeches given by John McCain and Barack Obama at their respective conventions. Wordle.net is truly a revolutionary website allowing you to create word clouds from any text imaginable. (Click each cloud for a larger picture.)

Obama:

McCain:

One of the starkest differences between the two speeches is highlighted by Obama's word cloud. Obama decided to use McCain's name 21 times in his speech, a style not employed by McCain who mentioned Obama only 6 times. McCain instead referred most often to "his opponent" and "the democrats". Both speeches set viewing records for political conventions. McCain's speech was seen by 38.9 million households and Obama's was seen by 38.4 million. It truly will be an amazing 2 months on the campaign trail leading up to this historic election.