President Trump’s address to Congress featured a markedly different tone from the combative one on display over the first five weeks of his presidency.
While many of his recent public appearances were closer in style to his campaign speeches, the speech on Tuesday night was in line with typical State of the Union addresses from previous presidents.
That’s according to a sentiment analysis of past speeches, which categorizes words according to several dimensions. Mr. Trump’s campaign speeches used a high proportion of words associated with “anger” — like fight, illegal or bad — and a relatively low proportion of words with positive associations — like build, freedom or peace.
Typical State of the Union addresses have showed the opposite pattern, emphasizing sunnier sentiments. Mr. Trump’s address on Tuesday night fit squarely in this tradition. Under these measures, his speech was closest in tone to Bill Clinton’s 1994 State of the Union address and not far from Barack Obama’s first address to Congress in 2009.
