OK, as usual, I'm sitting down to write this without really dipping into the oceans of ink (and electrons) that are being spilled right now by other pundits, so that my reactions to both the "State Of The Union" speech and the Republican response are untainted by either groupthink or the herd mentality. So there's a very good chance (as always) that what I thought will be a long way away from what others think (on both sides of the aisle). And, as usual, I'll be expounding on the speech in a rather random, stream-of-consciousness manner (because it is late, and my brain is numb from an hour and a half of political oratory). Just to warn everyone, up front.

One thing I've got to point out, too (before we get started), for anyone interested in some history about the State Of The Union speech -- the Washington Post has a wonderful reprint of an article from their archives up on their site right now. It was written in response to the news that Woodrow Wilson would be giving an actual speech (which hadn't been done in 112 years) to a joint session of Congress. It is absolutely fascinating look (it's a fairly long) into the politics of the time, right down to the forms of address used ("fellow Americans" is sneered at as being too Frenchified, believe it or not, as Republicans in the South were still fans of "gentlemen" as an all-encompassing form of address). In any case, check it out, fellow history buffs, as it's a great read that shows the origins of all the modern State Of The Union hoopla. OK, enough history, let's get on with what happened this evening.

President Obama spoke for a long time tonight. That, at least, we can all agree upon, right? The speech clocked in at around 65 minutes, when presidents routinely try to get the whole thing in under an hour. There were parts of Obama's speech that I thought were too long, and a lot of parts I thought were too short and wanted to hear more on. I suppose I'm beginning at the end, but this led to what seemed an awfully abrupt finish to the speech, where there was very little in the way of a conclusion or a rousing "bring it all back home" sort of big finish of any sort. Which, as State Of The Union speeches go, is fairly unusual -- presidents (including Obama) usually build for the final five (or even ten) minutes to a swelling crescendo that gets the crowd on their feet and wakes up the guys in the corner who have fallen asleep. That really didn't happen this time around.

Overall, I thought the speech was oversold by the White House (before the fact). This is a fairly common complain with State Of The Union speeches, so I'm sure I won't be the only one to point this out. But from the build-up beforehand, I expected a speech that would be unabashedly populist, and hit strongly on the theme of inequality. Obama did raise the issue, and did spend some time talking about it, but the biggest initiative he had on the subject was the one he had leaked beforehand (raising minimum wage for federal workers). The other theme the speech was supposed to have was Obama striking out on his own because Congress refused to act. More on this in a moment.

This isn't completely fair to Obama, I realize. The position he finds himself in is a tough one -- starting the sixth year of his presidency after going through a period when his approval numbers hit the lowest point he's yet seen, with a hostile House of Representatives and with the midterm elections looming off in the distance. That's a lot of headwind, to put it mildly.

Overall, I did think Obama did a great job of defending (and touting) his own successes. The most striking of these was the way he talked about turning the auto industry around. Obama mentioned this more than once, but in a very casual way: "...when we rescued the auto industry..." and "...as the auto industry came roaring back," almost as what actors call "asides," when talking about other issues. [Note: I don't have a transcript of the speech in front of me, so all quotes used herein are from my hastily-scribbled notes and may not be word-for-word accurate.] I thought this was a much more powerful way to remind Americans of a success, more so than trying for a big applause line from Democrats.

As far as those applause lines went, I thought the middle parts of the speech flowed much better than Obama's opening and his closing. In the first few minutes of the speech, Obama seemed almost to be rushing (which, given the length, is now understandable), but by doing so he stepped on some lines that should have gotten rousing ovations (at least, from his side of the aisle). Perhaps this was by design, as you have to wonder whether presidents themselves get tired of the whole "this side stands up and applauds, then the other side has their turn" aspect to these speeches. Who knows?

One other overall thing, then I'll have a look through all my individual notes. The president was obviously conscious of how his "I'm going to use executive power if you clowns won't act" theme was going to be received by Republicans. The first couple of times he stated he'd be acting on his own, it actually highlighted Republican priorities. Don't believe me? The first one I noticed (the first specific one -- this was after Obama raised the subject in a general way) was when Obama promised to cut regulations and "streamline" the way businesses interact with the government. This is a longstanding Republican issue, folks. He followed this up a few minutes later with a promise to "cut red tape" for the creation of new natural gas power plants -- again, hitting a Republican theme of "too much government interference." He did, on the third issue he raised, give a nod to Democrats, when he promised to protect natural lands (I'm assuming this means he'll be creating new National Monuments, which doesn't need congressional approval, as National Parks do). But two out of the first three were nods to the other side of the aisle. Will he get any credit for this from Republicans? Doubtful, which is why I point it out now.

OK, reading through my speech notes, Obama did have some good lines, the first of which was really "we should focus on creating new jobs, and not new crises" (referencing how government shutdowns and brinksmanship pleases nobody). Obama hit his main theme of opportunity and income inequality early, which he would return to several times during the rest of the speech. And he got some love from the room for bringing up both his wife's accomplishments and those of Biden's wife as well.

The best passage in the whole speech, I thought, was where he started off with "American success should depend not on an accident of birth," and then listed a few people who had reached powerful positions from lowly beginnings. Perhaps because this was one of the only real human (and dramatic) moments of the evening, when he used none other than John Boehner as an example, calling him "the son of a barkeep" who had become Speaker of the House. Boehner was visibly surprised, but reacted well (with both a thumbs-up gesture and then a salute). The rest of the night, of course, Boehner went from looking like he was bored to tears or perhaps sucking on a pickle -- but this is normal for any opposition leader sitting behind a president in this setting, I should add in all fairness.

From this moment of bonhomie, Obama pivoted right to the meat of the speech -- the "laundry list." Of course, faced with a divided Congress, he couldn't really realistically "swing for the fences" on much of anything with the possible exception of immigration reform. So (to continue the metaphor), he contented himself with "playing small ball." He zeroed in on a few things that he is quite obviously preparing to act alone on, and gave his justification for each. This part of the speech bores many commentators, but I found it to be workable and realistic this year. I also (as I mentioned) thought the middle section was where Obama truly hit his stride as an orator, with a flowing cadence and delivery.

Obama spoke strongly about climate change ("The debate is settled. Climate change is a fact."), but didn't really offer up any new proposals on the issue. Whether this will be enough for environmentalists or not is probably going to have to wait until after the White House announces the final decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, that's my best guess.

There was one new proposal involving Joe Biden on reforming job training, which we'll also have to see details on to accurately judge. Once again, though, this is a Republican priority (they've been pushing to simplify the number of federal agencies which do job training and job help for a while now).

Obama trotted out some personal stories during the speech, as all presidents are wont to do, and I thought the best one was the letter from the unemployed person, which ended with the heartfelt plea "Please give us this chance," which was well-received in the chamber.

Obama spoke on other subjects (education, high tech, retirement, voting rights, gun violence) without really offering up much in the way of meat. He did get a rousing response from Democrats when he spoke about women, and how they deserve equal pay. In fact, this was another one of the high points of the speech, as he gave a succinct list of why he (and Democrats) were fighting for America's women, instead of fighting a war against them. This had a good line in it about workplace practices "that belong in an episode of Mad Men" and concluded "when women succeed, America succeeds."

Raising the minimum wage for federal workers was wildly popular with Democrats, and Obama framed the issue about as perfectly as he possibly could: "if you cook our troops' meals or wash their dishes, you should not have to live in poverty." Excellent imagery, I have to say. But even in the minimum wage section of the speech, Obama shied away from full-throated populism and certainly didn't get into any "class warfare" arguments. He almost taunted Republicans on the minimum wage (which is shaping up to be one of the biggest Democratic issues in the midterm campaigns) with: "Join the rest of the country -- Give America a raise!"

Speaking of good framing, while he never actually used the term, Obama's defense of Obamacare was downright brilliant, with the example of the woman who got insured at the start of the month, and then was in surgery before the first week in January was out. This personalized the issue in a way that simply was not possible before the start of the actual benefits, and was handled perfectly, I thought. The whole Obamacare section of the speech was a pretty good defense of the actual facts of Obamacare, and ended with a rousing line (at least for Democrats): "the American people are not interested in fighting old battles -- let's not have another 40-plus votes" to kill Obamacare. And his line about "call your mother" got a laugh and took the edge off, at the very end.

I thought the weakest part of the speech was the entire passage on foreign policy, which began and ended with an "everyone loves the troops" moment. Of course, these both got perhaps the biggest standing ovations of the night, as they were designed to. But I thought the entire bit was too long and didn't have much new in it at all, unless you count Obama's promises to reform how he uses drones and how he spies on people.

Plenty of groups from Obama's Democratic base got very short shrift in this speech (gay rights were only briefly alluded to, when Obama touched upon the Olympics, for instance). This will, no doubt, be pointed out in greater detail in the coming days. And, as I mentioned before, there was almost no sweeping conclusion at the end to rouse the crowd.

All in all, the speech was less than I expected, and wasn't delivered nearly as well as Obama has proved he can orate in the past. So I was a little disappointed in the speech on style, and a little disappointed on the speech (although less so, given the concrete limits Obama faces) in terms of substance. If I was grading it, I think I'd give it a B-minus -- or perhaps a B, if I was in a good mood -- on both style and substance.

As for the Republican response, what the heck was that? "Let's get a woman to speak, because we seem to have a rather large problem with women," you can hear the Republican leadership muse, almost. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers gave a bizarre response to Obama's speech, in which she used roughly half the time to talk about her and her family. She used precisely zero amount of the time to talk about what policies or ideas Republicans were for. I mean, I could not come up with a more substance-free speech if I tried, I think.

To be scrupulously fair, responses to the State Of The Union speech are always tough, because you have no idea what the president is going to say. So you can't take his argument apart piece by piece, because you don't know in advance what the pieces are going to say. Even so, there was nothing stopping the Republicans from giving a rousing defense of their own list of priorities, since that wouldn't change no matter what Obama said. They missed their opportunity to do so. Instead, we were informed that Cathy McMorris Rodgers once worked at a McDonald's, and that she enjoyed the 4-H club as a child. She said at one point "Republicans have plans," but then followed this sweeping statement up with... nothing. Not a single plan was detailed in any way, shape, or form. Her delivery was pretty breathy, and I would rate it (charitably) as "not ready for prime time" (case in point, pronouncing "Brooklyn" as "Brookland"). She ended with a prayer in which she seemed to be trying to use the word "God" as many times in one passage as she humanly could.

All in all, a pretty forgettable experience. Grading her the same way I graded Obama, I'd give her a C-minus for style and a clear F (or, charitably, an "incomplete") on substance.

OK, that's it for snap judgments, folks. By tomorrow, we'll all see what others thought of tonight's speechifying, won't we?

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant