Capitol Words condenses political hot air into a single word

Members of Congress aren't known for being succinct. They frequently ramble over their allotted time for speeches and often debate deep into the night. They even have their own term for long-windedness -- the filibuster (practiced above by Jimmy Stewart in 1939's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington").

But the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit that uses technology to illuminate the often dimly lit workings of Congress, has come up with a novel way to condense all that hot air. Its new Capitol Words website distills the avalanche of rhetoric that spills forth on the House and Senate floors each day into a single word. On Tuesday, it was "health," which was used 112 times, more than any other substantive term. Reflecting soaring gas prices, "energy" was the most frequently uttered word on seven of the 12 days Congress has been in session this month.

Gabriella Schneider, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based foundation, said the site used the "simple lens" of that one word to reflect "the mood of our country and what our priorities are."

Capitol Words analyzes the text of each issue of the Congressional Record, the daily transcript of the proceedings on the House and Senate floors. The site strips out commonly used words such as "of" "the" and "America," the frequent references to "gentleman" and "gentlelady" and more than 500 procedural terms. What's left is ...

... a sort of online version of the Word of the Day calendar, for the politically minded.

The Sunlight Foundation has such words going back to 2000, so you can see the ebb and flow of issues such as housing, Iraq, immigration and taxes (unfortunately it's not searchable by date, so you have to click backward in a calendar view month by month).

Capitol Words is one way the foundation, launched in 2006 with $3.5 million from securities attorney Michael Klein, tries to help the public better scrutinize elected officials. For example, its Fortune 535  site uses financial disclosure records to show the net worth of each member of Congress -- and how  members' net worth has grown since they've been in office.

The websites got me pondering other ways technology could be used to make politics more understandable. A few from my wish list:

Codeword decoder: A widget that scrolls the true meaning behind terms such as "family values" and "states' rights" under a video feed of a politician's speech.

Stump-speech tabulator: An algorithm that calculates your actual out-of-pocket cost for all the policy proposals and promises that candidates make.

Campaign-season shrinker: Uses compression technology to reduce any seemingly endless political campaign to five days.

Let's hear your suggestions.

-- Jim Puzzanghera

Puzzanghera, a Times staff writer, covers tech and media policy from Washington, D.C.

Photo: Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Comments

[Lizzie]

Hi,

I work @ Sunlight. Glad you liked Capitol Words. Our Labs created a widget to make it easier for you to show the words on your site:

http://capitolwords.org/about/

Thanks for the great write up.