WASHINGTON – Change arrived in the hallowed halls of Congress last night.
It came in the form of 19 “thank yous” to quiet the thunderous applause from an ecstatic crowd of bipartisan lawmakers.
It came in the form of a speech filled with the same lofty hopes, grand visions and soaring rhetoric that won President Obama the election last November.
And it came in the form of the first lady of the United States arriving as the guest of honor at an event just this side of a State of the Union address wearing a sleeveless purple dress despite the frigid air outside.
With the possible exception of his inaugural address last month or his famous 2004 speech at the Democratic convention, this was the highest high-wire speech of Barack Obama’s political career.
But you wouldn’t have known it looking at him.
Waiting for the House sergeant-at-arms to introduce him, Obama stood in the shadow just outside the chamber doorway smiling amiably and chatting easily with those around him.
As he told a kid last month who asked him if he was nervous on the eve of his inauguration, “I don’t sweat. You ever see me sweat?”
Last night, at the sound of his name, Obama shot out of the gate and into the embrace of jubilant people up and down the aisle who had waited so long for his arrival.
He shook hands, hugged and kissed his way into the chamber.
“Very proud of you,” said Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., (D-Ill.), a fellow Chicagoan.
On Obama’s departure after the speech, Jackson would ask Obama to autograph two copies of Obama’s printed address and the two men exchanged kisses on the cheek.
Just getting down the aisle took awhile, but by the time Obama got to the well of the chamber, Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state – and once bitter foe – was standing there.
Famously icy, the couple embraced and Obama – not skipping a beat – gave her a firm kiss.
When Obama finally broke free from the mass of people and mounted the dais, he waited for the applause to die down.
When he began to speak, he broke the high form and trampled over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s introduction.
Without a hint of embarrassment or a drop of sweat, he simply gave her the floor and endured yet another round of applause.
Throughout his address, he ad-libbed lines with the famously raucous lawmakers and parried with their catcalls and spirited cheers.
When he announced Vice President Joe Biden would oversee the spending of his stimulus package, Obama added: “Because nobody messes with Joe.”
“Am I right?” he said, turning around to look at Biden seated behind him. “Nobody messes with you.”
It was Obama at his coolest. Never letting the enormity of his situation overtake him.
He was at ease, less presidential and more like a doting husband looking for his wife in the crowd. Or a proud dad.
No point during his entire address brought that closer to home than when he introduced Ty’Sheoma Bethea, a little girl from South Carolina who wrote a letter to Congress to describe the hopeless disrepair of her school.
“We are just students trying to become lawyers, doctors, congressmen like yourself and one day president, so we can make a change not just for the state of South Carolina but also the world,” she wrote. “We are not quitters.”