Business of counting words

Those clever Americans have graphs for everything. They even have graphs for how many times their president uses certain words in his state of the union address.

The website of Entrepreneur magazine has just published a graph plotting how often the Chief has uttered which words every year since 1935. So, for instance, we learn that in recent years "God" has been getting more of a look-in during the big annual speech on Capitol Hill than the word "entrepreneur".

In fact, we now know that the latter word had never been used in a state of the union address until Ronald Reagan used it three years into his presidency, in 1984.

Recently, under Barack Obama, the words "entrepreneur" and "small business", have been up in lights, according to entrepreneur. com: Obama has used the words six and 22 times respectively in his three state of the union speeches. That's the same number of times George Bush and Bill Clinton used the phrases in 14 speeches between them.

Obama has repeatedly banged the small-business drum during his presidency. Faced with the economic pig's ear he inherited from his predecessor, Obama had to use taxpayers' money to bail out the odious usurers whom the public would just as soon have had put up against a wall and shot but who, instead, went straight back to paying themselves indecent bonuses.

Obama had to do what he had to do, but he realised that Middle America detested bankers. And Wall Street.

On the other hand, they trusted entrepreneurs. Not only did they trust them, they looked to them for economic salvation.

This year's speech was a bit of a letdown for the entrepreneurial word-counters though. Obama didn't use the right words nearly as much as they had been hoping for, or nearly as much as two years ago when he referred to "small business" more than a dozen times, according to the Wall Street Journal. This year he talked about cutting red tape and easing access to capital for small business, but was short on specifics. Still, as the Journal quoted Chris Holman, chairman of the National Small Business Association: "I forgive politicians who run a country and have one hour to outline plans."

Even the Huffington Post noted approvingly that Obama talked about rewarding risk-takers as Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of the late Apple guy, looked on, saying: "Innovation is what America has always been about.

"Most new jobs are created in start-ups and small businesses, so let's pass an agenda that helps them succeed."

I know that right now you are giddy with anticipation just days ahead of our state of the nation address and will be wondering how often the words "entrepreneur" and "small business" crop up in addresses by our president to the joint houses of parliament.

I can't tell you what was said in 1935, but I have been doing a bit of number-crunching. Here are the results.

Last year Jacob Zuma referred to small business three times while making two other references to the subject.

The word "entrepreneur" or derivatives thereof was last used in 2009, when there were two states of the nation addresses, but no mention of small business per se and a combined number of four references to the sector.

The high-water mark for entrepreneurship was 2007 when Thabo Mbeki used the word "entrepreneurship" and referred to small enterprises no fewer than six times. (Mind you, that included the oxymoron, "the Small Enterprise Development Agency".)

By my reckoning, Zuma has referred to small enterprise 11 times in three speeches (including one instance in which he addressed himself to emerging farmers).

Entrepreneurship, it seems, has become one of the boxes that has to be ticked, along with foreign investment and job creation, the fight against crime and corruption and the need to improve education. Homilies are uttered and platitudes proffered, and then we all go back to muddling along as best we can and our schools remain crap and we get no closer to igniting an entrepreneurial can-do society.

In other words, don't expect anything that will ignite an entrepreneurial tsunami next Thursday.

Obama, for all his faults, has shown a sustained commitment to innovation and small business. He knows where his votes come from.

He also knows where the jobs come from. I'm just wondering: if, by chance, the American voters decide they don't want him back in the White House later this year, could we perhaps borrow the guy?