This is so awesome. If you haven’t been paying attention to the presidential race, this is pretty much all you need to know: Obama talks about himself, and McCain talks about…Obama. Word clouds are typically meaningless junk, but this is an extraordinarily meaningful application for them. ( via, via)

But these words are only taken from the posts on their blogs. Wouldn’t it be great if we could summarize what they’re actually saying?

Here are two more word clouds compiled from each Senators’ ten most recent speeches (in Obama’s case, the ten most recent that aren’t significantly similar to any other speeches he’s given). McCain’s is on the top, Obama’s on the bottom.

For your amusement, in his last ten speeches, McCain has said Obama’s name or some variation of it 48 times, compared to mentions of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan collectively at 63 times (a 1:1.3 ratio). (He uttered his own name zero times.) On the other hand, Obama has mentioned McCain’s name 43 times, versus the wars at 141 times (1:3.3). (He said his own name once.) McCain has mentioned the issue of offshore drilling for oil 30 times, while Obama has said oil-associated words 77 times.

All in all, it seems that McCain is doing a whole lot of talking about Obama and not a whole lot of talking about ISSUES.