Party Platform: If You Can't Read It In One Trip To the John, That's a Problem

Tim Cavanaugh | September 2, 2008

The Republican Party Platform (PDF) is approved, and we're going through looking for choice bits, but before we get to that, how about a note on brevity:

• Republican platform, not counting signatures: 24,620 words.

• Democratic platform (PDF), not counting appendices: 18,916 words.

• United States Constitution, counting amendments and a few extra words thrown in for navigation and content: 8,089 words.

The Libertarian Party does pretty well by this measure, coming in at a crisp 2,435 words. But maybe there's some sloganeering value in dispensing with it entirely, so you can just say "The U.S. Constitution is our platform."