In the House chamber last night, I was struck by how subdued the crowd reactions had been to Obama’s speech. There were no ridiculously long standing ovations, as is typical, relatively few extended interruptions for hand clapping, and several rather pointed moments of no clapping, especially from the Republican side. (This last part is, it must be said, not atypical.)
In my story for TIME.com, I highlighted this fact. To wit:
President Obama spoke the first 676 words of his State of the Union Address Wednesday night before the first hand clap. His tone was so somber, and the room’s mood so grave, that no one moved when Obama said, “We must answer history’s call.” There were no ovations when he called for “Democrats and Republicans to work through our differences, to overcome the numbing weight of our problems.” He got no love for saying, “the worst of the storm has passed.”
By the time he announced that, “We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college,” Obama was forced to go off script. “I thought I’d get some applause on that one,” he said, looking over to the Republicans, who were sitting on their hands. There was some giggling, and some of them relented, offering the Congressional version of a golf clap.
This morning, a White House aide emails to object to the tone of my article. The long stretch of no applause in the beginning of the speech, the aide says, was intentional, not a sign of an unreceptive chamber. The aide wrote,
When we practiced the speech, we didn’t assume he’d get applause until exactly the line that he did. History’s call, storm has passed, and all the rest you mentioned were never designed to be applause lines, which is why he didn’t raise his voice for them. We thought it was more important for him talk directly to the American people about the struggles they were facing. And as far as Republicans sitting on their hands, we actually received applause for many more lines than I had assumed: on the bank bailout, on many of our jobs proposals, and TWICE on health care!
On the last point, I can confirm that a number of Obama’s health care lines caused significant confusion in the Republican caucus. At least twice, Michigan Rep. Thad McCotter, the chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee, which has been doing work on health care, could be seen encouraging the other leadership–including Reps. John Boehner and Eric Cantor– to applaud Obama’s more generic lines about health care. In both cases I noted, McCotter got his peers to reluctantly relent and offer some visible approval.