Tool Measures Stock Phrases

Cameron Marlow, an MIT Media Lab scholar, has created a tool to parse the first debate script for phrases. The tool reports that these are Bush's top five: free iraq (14), hard work (13), wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time (13), wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place (12), north korea (10). These are Kerry's: saddam hussein (14), north korea (14), nuclear weapons (10), weapons of mass destruction (9), osama bin (9). This points out how much better Bush is at staying "on message" and/or having good soundbites. However, my count of "hard work" is 15 because I did a semantic count; judgment remains a useful tool, too.