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Yesterday’s State of the Union was noted for its emphasis on the President’s plans for social security, but on today’s show we focused on the evolution of the speech in its treatment of foreign policy. Judging from the word counts of the speech, the president spoke more about “freedom” and “democracy” and less about “Iraq” this year than he did in 2003 (in the run up to the war). “Democracy” got 1 mention in 2003 versus 8 in yesterday’s speech; “Freedom” got 20 mentions yesterday versus five in the pre-Iraq war speech. Perhaps even more important, there were three mentions of “weapons” this time around, versus 27 in 2003.

To highlight this point, we played extended excerpts of both SOTU’s on the show. What does this change in emphasis mean? Click on to see the texts of both speeches and mail us your thoughts.