Validity

In statistics, validity is a property of measurement; it says that what you’re measuring is strongly related to what you want to measure.  A simple example is measuring body-mass index (a combination of height and weight) as an indicator of obesity.  Here are two viewpoints on the validity of political speech.  First is Martin Krzywinski’s Lexical Analysis of Presidential Debates:

The Obama/McCain debates began with balanced performance from both
candidates but end with Obama verbally overpowering McCain and
delivering speech with more concepts and higher complexity. When words
exclusive to a candidate are considered, Obama’s more frequent use of
verbs and much more frequent use of adjectives and adverbs, compared to
McCain, suggests that he is more of a fluid and contextual thinker who,
unlike McCain whose language metrics suggest a categorical approach,
does not seek to fit issues into pre-existing categories. Obama’s
greater use of modifiers suggest an outlook that is more open to nuance
and inter-relatedness of events and issues.

On the flip side is rancher Gary Jones’ more abstract observation

This is an old theme for me. It isn’t just executives that try to bluff
their way through life. Much of what passes for scholarship strikes me
as trying to baffle them with bullshit. Worse, those scholars seem to
be proud of themselves, to actually believe that they have great
knowledge and understanding. That’s not apparent from their words, and
it’s doubtful that it could be so, since they seem to be unaware of
their ignorance or don’t want anyone else to suspect it, and so they
don’t ask for clarification. They become immune to new knowledge.

So, are "complexity and nuance" VALID measures of knowledge and executive ability?

Tip from Flowing Data.