Everybody remembers Barack Obama’s famous “Yes We Can” speech.

Can you imagine how powerful, how memorable, how defining it would have been if he had instead called it, “Affirmative! This Collective Is Capable”?

The average American reads at or below an 8^th-grade level.

For those who want to communicate with said average American, common sense says speaking to them at an 8^th grade level will most effectively convey your message.

For the third State of the Union address in a row, President Obama has done just that. The text of his speeches have been written barely above the 8^th-grade reading level.

The teleprompter critics who’ve long argued that Obama ought to be spending more time memorizing his speeches and less time killing terrorists are now arguing that either the president himself is stupid, or he thinks Americans are.

“Is this the continued dumbing down of America.” asked ScaredMonkeys in a falsely-punctuated sentence.

As The Economist noted, several other critics threw in their two cents.

In a blog post titled, “Obama Treats the American People Like 8^th Graders,” Stuart Schneiderman called the speech “condescending.”

Either Obama thinks that the American people are not very bright, or he believes that the people who voted for him are poorly educated, or else he himself thinks like an eighth grader.

Either Schneiderman wants the president to set an example by writing and speaking at his education level—which, measured in years, would be 19—or else he’s upset that Obama doesn’t read him Green Eggs and Ham at bedtime.

Was the speech too elementary for the Capitol Hill doctors of jurisprudence? Were lawmakers offended because it wasn’t linguistically titillating enough for their high-brow tastes?

Maybe, but who (outside the Incompetence Club known as Congress) really cares? It may have lacked the intellectual eloquence of a late-Christopher Hitchens column, but at least Michele Bachmann’s Tea Party caucus could follow along.

Just for fun, let us imagine how the State of the Union speech would have sounded had Obama spoken as if before an audience of Harvard Law professors.

Instead of saying, “My message is simple,” Obama might have said:

The forthcoming oration from this incumbent executive mansion denizen is of a comprehensible vernacular.

Instead of saying…

Think about the America within our reach:  A country that leads the world in educating its people. An America that attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and high-paying jobs. …An economy built to last, where hard work pays off, and responsibility is rewarded.

We can do this.  I know we can, because we’ve done it before.

…he could have said this:

Contemplate the graspable future of Amerigo Vespucci’s namesake: A sovereign state which shepherds the oblate spheroid terra in inculcating its inhabitants, that platonically and professionally seduces a contemporary lineage of avant-garde product fabricators and bourgeoisie rates of remuneration. …An économie fashioned for longevity, where zealous diligence is meritocracized and reliability is recompensed.

Our collaboration can effectuate this. I can cognize the eventuality, as our collaboration has effectuated heretofore.

When he said, “It is time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America,” perhaps he should have said:

We shalt briskly cease consigning perquisites to multinational conglomerates which heedlessly migrate domestic vocational opportunities to non-native international quarters, and commence consigning perquisites to multinational conglomerates which forge aforementioned livelihoods within the conspicuous and patriotically adorned perimeters of our motherland.

The presidency has evolved a bit in the last few years, in that it was once occupied by a born-again Texan who made up words—“misunderestimated,” “strategery,” “contamidated”—and is now home to a man whose years as a professor of constitutional law gives him the license to speak professorially but who chooses to connect with his countrymen on their level.

For those who’ve tried to paint the president as professorial and elitist, it must be aggravating to see Obama speak plain English; to recognize that the president recognizes that to speak above the nation’s mean literacy parlance is to speak beyond its comprehension.

It proves academic proficiency andpolitical intelligence.

It also helps explain the recent Pew Research/Washington Post poll showing that 55 percent of Americans say Obama best relates to their problems, compared to 39 percent for Mitt Romney.

Obama speaks to Americans as we speak to each other. Let’s not misunderestimate his intentions for doing so.