Obama's Big Night On Capitol Hill

A few years ago if I had wanted to catch the President's State of the Union (or speech to Congress, whatever you'd like to call the first Joint Address in the term) afterhours, I'd have to wait and wait and wait. Now I don't even have to find a good quality video on YouTube, all it took was a short trip to Whitehouse.gov. I also got to fast forward to the actual speech when I couldn't take anymore applauding.

As for the actual speech, it was knocked out of the park with the bases loaded. It even topped his move earlier in the day to lay out a clear path of withdrawing our troops in Iraq. The address in its entirety spoke to all Americans, and all but the hardest of hard-core Republicans overwhelmingly approved. We already knew he was good at campaign speeches, but as President they just keep getting better and better.

Unfortunately, what is not better is the economy and that was the 800 pound elephant in the room (yes, you can equate that animal inference to the party with a similar emblem). Obama didn't ignore it though, he went straight for the pachyderm and spoke with truth and honesty that even got the applause of some Republicans. Of course, their party is in disarray and whatever bright hopes of new leadership they think they have is woefully incompetent and delusional, as we saw right after Obama's speech. As a Republican from Louisiana to talk about Katrina and complain about the government is...mindblowing.

Last night, we saw the heads of both parties give their best and really, there is no comparison, whatsoever. Obama owned the night.