A Four‐Component Framework for Measuring Cognitive‐Rhetorical Complexity in Presidential Discourse, 1789–2025

ABSTRACT This article proposes a four‐component Narrative‐Intelligence (NI) proxy framework for measuring cognitive‐rhetorical complexity in presidential discourse, applied to 1048 speeches from the Miller Center corpus spanning all 45 presidents (1789–2025). The four era‐neutral components, windowed type‐token ratio, a subordination index, causal density, and a Labov‐grounded narrative scorer, are normalized within genre‐stratified subsets before aggregation. Barack Obama leads the formal corpus on composite NI score and Abraham Lincoln is the only president in the top 10 across three components simultaneously; and the framework independently replicates Lim's (2002, 2008) anti‐intellectualism trend from a different methodological angle. A five‐type rhetorical profile typology is proposed and studied against Skowronek (1993) and Neustadt (1960).