Listening to President Barack Obama's State Of The Union speech tonight, I couldn't help but think that he's been waiting a long time to give such a speech, and he was happy to finally be giving it. Finally he could speak of the economy without having to hedge his language. Finally, he could unleash his inner optimism once again.

This is, of course, a personal reaction. I have no real idea of how anyone else saw Obama's speech tonight, and prefer to instead write down my own snap reactions before trolling the news media for other responses. So, come tomorrow morning, I could be the odd man out, propounding an opinion few others share. It has certainly happened before, in both directions (where I've been too optimistic or too pessimistic, and the conventional wisdom moves in the opposite direction). But then again, that's the chance you take when offering up snap reactions.

I'm going to start with some overall observations here before I get down to individual items in Obama's speech, and then close with a brief reaction to Joni Ernst's Republican response speech. Oh, and one caveat: I didn't take the time to download the prepared speech text, so I'm going on my own hastily-jotted notes for all of the quotes below. If there are minor errors between what is written here and what was exactly said, they are all mine. Just to let you know in advance.

General impressions

Obama gave what I would call a thematic speech. He hit broad themes rather than getting too bogged down in what most call the "laundry list" aspect of State Of The Union speeches. The broad themes I heard were: optimism, "middle class economics," and American values. He hit each of these in a number of ways, and did an excellent job of tying them all into one single narrative that people could easily relate to.

The other big takeaway from the speech for me was that Obama was finally freed up to toot his own horn a bit -- something that all presidents do to some extent or another, but something that Obama hasn't done as successfully as he did tonight. Three things allowed him to now do so: the improvement in the economy, the improvement in Obama's public opinion polling numbers, and the fact that he will not face any more elections until the end of his term (when there will be another Democrat leading the momentum of the party, from the campaign trail). One can't help but wonder whether, if the economy had made more improvement roughly six months ago, Obama couldn't have spoken out like this and perhaps not been clobbered so badly in the 2014 midterms. For far too long, Democratic candidates have been told by consultants: "Don't appear too cheerful about the improving economy, people will think you're out of touch with reality." Obama, tonight, signaled the end of that era, as he proudly touted his own accomplishments as well as the American economy's accomplishments in the past six years. He seemed freed up to finally talk up the economy, to put this another way.

Obama seemed entirely comfortable with the speech he gave. The cadence was perfect for his way of orating, and he seemed incredibly relaxed for such an important speech. Or maybe "relaxed" isn't really the right word, since at times he did get very energetic. He seemed in his element -- that might be a better way to put it. We saw the old Obama from the campaign trail rather than the President Obama with the carefully-parsed phrases we've seen in other State Of The Union speeches.

Obama also seemed feisty giving the speech. If you had been in a coma for six months and woke up to hear Obama speak tonight, you'd have a hard time believing how rough the midterms were for him. This is not a seventh-year president who is desperately arguing for his own relevance, the way some have had to do in the past. This is a re-energized Obama who has seen his approval rise ever since the midterms, with each bold proposal he makes.

Deep down, of course, Obama knows that most of his congressional agenda simply isn't going to happen. Tonight's speech has been called by many (me included) as nothing more really than the first draft of the Democratic Party platform for the 2016 election race. It's more aspirational than expecting results any time soon from a Republican-held Congress. This is likely one reason Obama chose not to follow the usual "laundry list" format such speeches usually conform to. Everyone knew all the proposals Obama has put forward already, since he leaked them all in advance. So he didn't need to outline them tonight, or get lost in the wonky policy weeds. This allowed him to instead talk about values and why doing these things was the right agenda for the country.

Obama not only leaked his agenda ahead of time, he also put the text of the speech online, so people could follow along if they wished. Before he began, from the expectations the White House had set, I was looking for Obama's equivalent of the Reaganesque "Morning in America" -- sunny optimism and a cheerful, bright future for America. This is precisely what we heard from the president tonight.

Specific impressions

The speechwriters really deserve a lot of credit for this speech, because it fit Obama's natural speaking style so well. He was downright folksy at times, using phrases (like "screwed up") that people don't generally expect in a presidential speech at this level. Several of these phrases stuck out, such as his opening "Tonight, we turn the page," which harkened back to stump speeches he gave when originally running for president. "The shadow of the crisis has passed and the state of the Union is strong," also stood out.

Obama made a solid case for optimism about the future, and pointed out in several different ways that his opponents have now been proven completely wrong in their doom-and-gloom naysaying. All the ugly things Republicans predicted have just not come true -- over and over again.

The overall framework of Obama's speech was based on one woman's story about her own family. Obama returned again and again to what the woman wrote to him, and her own personal struggle. This served to humanize what Obama was saying in general, and was a pretty good oratorical frame to put around his message. "Her story is our story" is really where Obama both began and ended his speech.

Obama had a pretty rousing and impressive list of the economic achievements we've now reached, and closed with a folksy: "This is good news, people!" He immediately defended his legacy so far and point-blank told Republicans that if they tried to dismantle it, "I will veto." This point was forcefully made more than once during the speech, in fact. Again, not exactly a president in decline.

One phrase that occurred at least five or six times was "middle class economics," which I easily predict is going to soon become a Democratic mantra. Look for this phrase to be everywhere in the 2016 campaign, in other words. Obama also returned, in various ways, to closing his arguments for each issue with "It's the right thing to do."

Obama, twice (once intentionally, once as an ad lib we'll get to in a moment) truly challenged the Republicans sitting in front of him. The first occasion was on the minimum wage, where he tossed down the "You try living on it" challenge.

Obama's timing throughout the night was near-perfect, only having his words swallowed by applause on a few occasions, and only stumbling over his delivery once or twice in a minor way. Joe Biden, of course, was even looser than the president, and while his wife was being given an Obama shout-out, stood up and blew her a kiss. Way to go, Joe!

Obama, quite rightly, didn't spend a whole lot of time on his tax reform proposal, since he had already leaked the details and since Republicans are never going to go along with raising taxes on the uber-wealthy anyway. Obama did chide Republicans (and Democrats, for that matter) on not doing their job in sending him an authorization to use military force on the Islamic State radicals. Obama made a solid case that his foreign policy moves have been the right ones, and have proven his naysayers wrong, but he really hit his stride when speaking of Cuba, saying: "A policy that was long past its expiration date. When what you're doing doesn't work for 50 years, it's time to try something new." He ended his foreign policy section with another veto warning, on further Iran sanctions.

Obama tore one Republican argument to shreds, taking direct aim at the "I'm not a scientist" line that several prominent Republicans have used to hide behind while endlessly delaying any action on global warming. This was perhaps the biggest (planned) snarky moment during the whole speech, in fact.

As Obama rounded the last corner and headed for the homestretch, he began to get downright inspirational. He tied his own record to his overarching American values theme, and really swung for the fences in a number of ways (such as: "It is not who we are. It is time to close Gitmo" and summing up American values as "That's what makes us exceptional.").

At the very end of the speech, he even took on two groups just as icing on the rest of the feisty cake. The first singled out were cynical pundits, who have complained that Obama hasn't singlehandedly gotten rid of partisan bad feelings in Washington. Obama tossed it right back at them, saying "I still think the cynics are wrong," before showing (there is no real other political term to appropriately use, here) some downright Reaganesque cheery optimism. While doing so, he blatantly tried to influence the Supreme Court justices in the audience in his rousing support for the movement the country has made on marriage equality.

Almost at the very end of the speech, the funniest moment happened (one you'll probably see on tomorrow's news, that's my guess). Obama was in the midst of making a plea for comity from Congress (this fit into his whole "the cynics are wrong" idea), and he pointed out "I have no more campaigns to run." There was a small burst of enthusiastic applause from the Republican side of the aisle that Obama clearly didn't expect. This got a round of laughter from the crowd, but then Obama knocked it out of the park with his off-the-cuff response: "I know, 'cause I won both of them" which got an enormous round of applause from the Democratic side of the aisle. Good to know Obama can still handle unexpected heckling so well!

Obama wrapped up his hour-long speech by pivoting right back to the personal story of the woman and her family's struggles, putting the conclusion into the context of the entire country: "We too are a tight-knit family."

Then, on his way out of the room, President Obama provided another clip you'll see again (this time, likely on late-night comedy), as he personally signed a guy's necktie. That was the perfect casual end to a speech that Obama clearly had a lot of fun delivering.

The Republican response

I'm glad I didn't leave the room for the Republican response, because it was over so fast it would have been easy to miss. The entire response was only nine minutes long, and about five of those were taken up with Joni Ernst competing for the "I was born in a log cabin" prize, it seemed. I guess her entire Senate campaign must've been pretty much centered around a "Gosh, I'm jes' folks" theme, because we heard about her little-girl shoes wrapped in bread bags, the dirt on her parents' and grandparents' hands, and how nice the town Ernst grew up in was.

There were only two other sections of the speech, each only a few minutes' long. The first was a seriously gloomy portrayal of where America now stands and what we can expect in the near future. This isn't that unusual, since it has been the Republican playbook pretty much since Obama took office. However, it sounded remarkably tone-deaf after Obama's speech. Rather than optimism seeming out-of-touch, Ernst's pessimism instead seemed remarkably out of step with all of the positive news of the past few months. One can't help but wonder if Republicans are going to continue to ignore any good news for the next two years, in fact. I mean, of course Ernst saved her biggest doom-and-gloom language for Obamacare (that's also to be expected), but Ernst didn't have a happy thing to say about much of anything else (although I do give her stylistic credit for opening her speech with a very polite "it's important to hear different points of view" comment about Obama's speech).

Ernst saved her doomiest gloom for what she had to say about terrorism, though. OK, I get it, she has served with distinction in the military. So being rah-rah about both the military and veterans is pretty much expected. Even so, the tone of her strident anti-terror stance was still a bit jarring.

But what was truly stunning about Ernst's speech was how content-free the entire thing really was. She attempted to make the case that "America has sent a new Republican majority to Washington to get some things done," but she couldn't really name many specific items on their agenda, even in passing. The Keystone pipeline was about the most specific proposal she had, which is pretty small-time stuff for a State Of The Union response. She did whip through a generic list of stuff the Republican Congress will attempt, but it was incredibly short and quick. Maybe it was just her delivery, I'm not sure (her delivery was better than some notable Republican failures, such as Bobby Jindal, but wasn't anywhere near "ready for prime time" quality, even so). Ernst's list of Republican priorities: repeal and replace Obamacare (without specifying what she'd replace it with, of course), stop Obama's executive overreach (without specifying what she'd do on any particular issue he's been overreaching on, of course), balance budgets, fight cybercrime, say mean things to Iran, and pass every "pro-life" bill Republicans could possibly manage, so Obama can veto them all.

That's it? That's all Republicans have got, in response to Obama laying out what will essentially become the Democratic Party platform for 2016? Republicans seem destined to choose pessimism over optimism and doom-and-gloom over morning in America. And they hate Obamacare a whole bunch. Oh, and Joni Ernst comes from such humble beginnings it'd be easy to picture a log cabin as her family's homestead.

That's pretty much all I took away from Ernst. Not much, in other words, delivered in nine short minutes.

OK, those are my snap reactions to the speeches tonight. What are yours?

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant