In 1996, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg took a computer summarizing software and entered the combined texts of the speeches from the first two nights of the Republican Convention. The summary that this program returned was surprisingly coherent:
We are the Republican Party--a big, broad, diverse, and inclusive party, with a commonsense agenda and a better man for a better America, Bob Dole. We need a leader we can trust. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for being part of this quest in working with us to restore the American dream. The commonsense Republican proposals are the first step in restoring the American dream because Republicans care about America. But there is no greater dream than the dreams parents have for their children to be happy and to share God's blessings.
A short time later, Nunberg tried the same experiment with the Democratic Convention that year. This time, however, the software returned "pure word salad," according to Nunberg. (Alas, he did not enlighten us by reprinting the text it returned.) Why the difference? He speculated that it was because the Democrats had "trouble staying on message," or that "they just go on longer."
I read this anecdote long ago, in Nunberg's books The Way We Talk Now and Talking Right. But I've been reminded of it as of late when listening to the syntax of a particular recent figure in politics, who shall go unnamed. This person's syntax ranges from that of the generic-but-coherent summary presented earlier to "pure word salad." (Just about the only thing dated about the above summary is that the GOP would boast about being a "big, broad, diverse, and inclusive party.")
Maybe, just maybe, we could be at the dawn of a new age, when politicians, like so many other jobs previously occupied by humans, could well be replaced by computers. Just think about it. Nobody wants to watch a robot or a computer monitor standing by a podium enunciating a speech in a digitized voice, but that's where humans would still have a role--they'd be the pretty face standing there reciting what the computer had dictated to them to say. So the computers wouldn't literally be replacing the politicians. They'd just be telling them everything they're supposed to say.
Would a substantial portion of the country ever elect such a person? You tell me.