A common theme regarding Hillary Clinton is that it's all about her. She will do anything to be elected no matter what or who it hurts, including the Democratic party. In short, when it comes to Hillary, we're not talking about the greater good, only about Hillary.
Her self-centered attitude is reflected in different ways; for example, when asked about Tim Russert's question to Obama about Farrakhan at a news conference, she talked about how she's been given a hard time by the press. To me, Obama is strikingly much the opposite - he doesn't turn everything into something about him. In an attempt to test this hypothesis that Clinton is more self-centered than is Obama, I've collected some objective, quantifiable data.
More below ....
The experiment is simple: I simply counted the number of times Clinton and Obama use the word "I" in their speeches. I chose two speeches for each. One was the speech they each gave after the Ohio primary on last Tuesday night and can be found here and here for Hillary and Barack, respectively. The other was, I believe, their recent, standard stump speech, which can be found here and here. The word "I" was counted when used alone or in a contraction (i.e., I'll, I'd, I've).
The data are quite striking:
For the election night speeches, Clinton used the word "I" 25 times, whereas Obama used it 9 times. This difference is even more pronounced when the total number of words for each speech is considered. For Clinton, the speech was 1214 words, meaning that "I" was 2.1% of the speech, whereas for Obama it was 0.5% of a 1831 word speech.
For the stump speeches, Clinton used "I" 83 times in a 2950 word speech (2.8% of the speech), whereas for Obama, "I" was used 65 times in a 4299 word speech (1.5% of the words).
Admittedly, this is a small sample of speeches. But the choice was not biased; in other words, I didn't shop around for them but just went for the first of each type I turned up. I would welcome a more thorough analysis of a greater number of speeches.
Statistics would be inappropriate and meaningless with such a small sample, but a simple interocular test tells you that Clinton uses "I" much more than does Obama. I would suggest that this is strong evidence that she is in fact much more self-centered than Obama and that the claim that with Clinton it's all about her is not just a hollow criticism but a fact.
I think we all know from the last 7 years what it means to have a self-absorbed President. Do we really want more of the same?