Measuring Ideas More Effectively: An Analysis of Bush and Kerry's National Security Speeches
- 6 October 2005
- journal article
- features
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in PS: Political Science and Politics
- Vol. 38 (4), 701-711
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s1049096505050195
Abstract
On Sunday, October 10th, 2004, the New York Times Magazine featured an article with the cover title, “Really, What Does He Think? John Kerry and the Post-9/11 World” (Bai 2004). On the cover of the magazine was a serious-looking photo of Senator Kerry, superimposed with keywords such as “Terrorism,” “Iraq,” “Al Qaeda,” “Multilateralism,” “Nuclear proliferation,” and so on. While the article itself was intriguing, even more intriguing was the magazine's attempt to capture Kerry's core ideas on American national security with the use of keyword graphics—namely, the keywords on the cover, placed in what appeared to be a random order around the photo of Kerry, and the underlining of “John Kerry,” “terrorism,” and “Americans” in the inside title. Catchy graphics, but hardly an accurate depiction of the keywords that might actually represent Kerry's thinking on American national security. And, for all the comparison made in the article itself with President Bush's stance on national security, where were the graphics for George W.? (They did not emerge in the next New York Times Magazine.) The magazine was, nonetheless, making an important point: that words (and the ideas they represent) are emotive—particularly in the highly charged climate of the 2004 presidential campaign. I am grateful for comments and suggestions from Andrew Bailey, Diane Maurice, David Mayhew, and Frances Rosenbluth. I am also grateful to the Georg Walter Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy (Yale Center for International and Area Studies) for funding that initiated this article, and to Mina Moshkeri (LSE Design Unit) for her assistance in preparing the graphs.Keywords
This publication has 32 references indexed in Scilit:
- The American Right and the Iraq WarThe Political Quarterly, 2004
- Doing Web-Based Content Profile AnalysisSocial Science Computer Review, 2003
- Estimating Policy Positions from Political TextsAmerican Journal of Political Science, 2000
- KEYWORDS in Context: Statistical Analysis of Text FeaturesPublished by SAGE Publications ,2000
- Frame Mapping and Analysis of News Coverage of Contentious IssuesSocial Science Computer Review, 1997
- The Liberal-Conservative Ideology of U.S. Senators: A New MeasureAmerican Journal of Political Science, 1997
- The Past as Prologue?: Interests, Identity, and American Foreign PolicyInternational Security, 1997
- Discourse analysis and psychological adaptation to high altitude hypoxiaStress Medicine, 1995
- Does Being Male Help? An Investigation of the Effects of Candidate Gender and Campaign Coverage on Evaluations of U.S. Senate CandidatesThe Journal of Politics, 1992
- Explaining Change in Policy Subsystems: Analysis of Coalition Stability and Defection over TimeAmerican Journal of Political Science, 1991