[W]ASHINGTON — “The state of the union is tired,” I started to text as I left the Capitol shortly after 1 a.m. Wednesday morning, before my phone, defeated by a long day and a crisp night, powered down.
A few hours earlier President Donald Trump had declared the union “strong.” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., declared it “tenuous.”
The House chamber is not a small room. The well comfortably accommodates the 435 House members on days when they’re present.
Add the 100-member Senate, the president’s Cabinet, top ranking military officials, Supreme Court justices, invited guests and about 200 members of the press, and the place feels pretty packed.
Senators entered the House chamber, led by Vice President Mike Pence, about half an hour before President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union speech on Tuesday night.
Sen. Patrick Leahy appeared early, carrying his camera, and made his way to his seat on an aisle near the center. He mingled, posing with Sens. Ron Wyden and Cory Booker, for a selfie taken by Booker.
Sen. Bernie Sanders followed a few minutes later, giving curt nods and quick handshakes to lawmakers lining the entrance. Once at his seat, far to the left of the chamber, he sat down and stayed put as other lawmakers, including Rep. Peter Welch, stopped by to visit.
Welch meanwhile chatted with members of the House and Senate, some military top brass. He snapped a photo of some colleagues on his phone. Eventually he settled into a seat near the middle of the room, next to former DNC Chair and Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The president’s guests filed into the western gallery overlooking the chamber. When first lady Melania Trump entered, those on the Republican side stood and clapped enthusiastically. Democrats joined in.
Moments later, came a shout from the chamber’s main entrance, barely audible over the din: “Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States.”
Trump slowly made his way through a crowd of lawmakers eager to shake his hand, his face barely visible to those watching from above.
Applause roared from the Republican side. Democrats stood, largely silent.
While the Constitution requires the president to check in regularly with Congress, the tradition of delivering an annual address is barely a century old.
This was Trump’s first State of the Union address. It was also mine.
In the hours before the speech, the presence of security personnel and reporters throughout the Capitol stepped up notably.
Television crews took over Statuary Hall, the semi-circular room that served as the House chamber until the mid-19th century. On Tuesday night, the 35 life-sized statues in permanent residence in the room were joined by international media. Red velvet ropes cut a pathway through the middle of the room. As the evening wore on, dozens of reporters, lawmakers and guests swarmed through.
A marble Ethan Allen bedecked in formal military dress and a tri-point hat (an 1876 gift from the state of Vermont) peered over the crowd from his perch in the eastern corner of the room.
Press gallery staff warned that movement around the Capitol would be limited. As a general principle, when the president is moving, nobody else is.
Security points choked traffic in hallways leading to the House chamber. Secret Service in military green flak jackets joined outposts of uniformed Capitol Police along hallways, checking IDs.
I’d been considering going home for leftover cauliflower pasta bake for dinner, but was dissuaded by a Capitol Police officer I’d consulted about getting back into the building.
“I wouldn’t risk it,” the officer advised.
So this reporter settled for a bacon-loaded BLT from the cafeteria in the basement on the Senate side, and shortly after 8 p.m. joined other members of the press seeking their assigned seats in the gallery overlooking the well of the House.
Republicans below, to the right side of the chamber, greeted each other jubilantly. Some wore bright ties. Some women dressed in bright red.
The tone on the Democratic side, to the left was more somber. Most Democratic women wore black, in solidarity with the #MeToo movement raising awareness of sexual harassment in high (and low) places.
Several senators, including Sanders, wore purple ribbons to raise awareness of the opioid crisis — following the lead of the New Hampshire delegation. Leahy wore a purple tie in that spirit, his staff said.
A few lawmakers displayed yellow stickers with butterflies, to show solidarity with immigrants.
Trump received a boisterous welcome from members of his party in the well of the chamber, as well as from guests who lined three sides of the visitors’ gallery above. (Press occupied the fourth side.)
Some points on policy roused support on both sides of the aisle. Sanders stood and clapped for one of Trump’s points on renegotiating international trade agreements, for instance.
Trump’s guests, who included small business owners from Ohio, the parents of two teens murdered by MS-13 gang members in Long Island, a 12-year-old leading an effort to put flags on veterans’ graves and more, generally received bipartisan ovations.
Lawmakers brought guests of their own. Sanders invited a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program who worked on his 2016 presidential campaign. Welch brought his brother. Leahy didn’t invite any particular guest. His wife, Marcelle, was seen walking with him through the Capitol later in the evening.
Cheers and applause from Republicans — on issues like the recently passed tax reform package or the administration elimination of regulations — contrasted with the deafening silence from the left side of the chamber.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was reported to have cautioned the Democratic caucus to behave during the speech. Her advice was largely heeded.
At one point, responding to an upswell of groans and hisses from the Democratic side following Trump’s comment on his proposal to overhaul immigration laws, Pelosi threw her hands out to the side in what appeared to be a calming motion.
An avid photographer, Leahy snapped photos throughout the evening. At one point he nudged Wyden, seated to his right, and showed him a shot. Sanders spent the speech taking notes in red pen on loose pieces of paper.
About 20 minutes before the end, as Trump was wading into the opioid crisis, gallery staff gathered up reporters who wanted to decamp to Statuary Hall. A police escort was required to accompany reporters the short distance down the stairs and around the corner, in order to be in place to ask questions of lawmakers streaming out of the chamber once the thing was over.
When the president is moving, nobody else is.
Welch was one of the first to arrive in the hall after the speech, making a beeline to the Hearst television station.
Sanders emerged from the House chamber, speed-walking the press gauntlet without stopping for comments. He was en route to a media studio to deliver an online rebuttal to the president’s speech.
Leahy sauntered through later, taking questions from reporters.
Welch said differences in reception to the speech in the chamber were “a reflection of the division,” as well as “the I think feeling on the part of the Republican side that they’ve got to cheer everything he says.”
“Whenever there was an acknowledgment by the president of a soldier, a first responder, a family who suffered loss, all of us showed our respect by both clapping and standing up,” Welch said.
“When he was talking policy, he was not addressing, in a serious way, the deep divisions,” Welch said.
A few hours later, as the building quieted, this reporter — weary from learning the ropes on Capitol Hill, not all of them made of red velvet — wondered whether it would really have been so risky to go home for leftovers for dinner after all.
But walking home shortly after 1 a.m. she observed a work crew busy dismantling the metal barriers that a few hours earlier had blocked all traffic from going anywhere near the Capitol.
The BLT was probably the wise choice.
