tonight on "nightline," after the speech. we are live in washington to assess president obama's crucial state of the union address. the report card. from what he said to how he said it, our experts are here to grade the speech. the state of the union. a special edition of "nightline" starts right now. >> announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with cynthia mcfadden and bill weir in new york city and terry moran in washington, this is "nightline," january 25th, 2011. >> good evening, i'm terry moran. winning the future. that was the theme of president obama's state of the union address tonight. that's how he summed up the

challenges facing the country and his plans to meet them. it is a tenuous moment for president obama, a moment of drama and opportunity in the wake of the tucson shootings that seemed to sober up the political classes somewhat. but it's a crossroads in his presidency, and the president faces challenges of his own. tonight, we take a look at what he said and how he did. it was different this time. you could see the shift in attitudes here in washington in the house chamber itself. dozens of democrats and republicans crossing the aisle to sit together. and so many wearing black and white ribbons, black for mourning, white for peace. >> mr. speaker, the president of the united states! >> reporter: hovering over president obama's speech tonight was an unmistakable spirit, a newfound sense of what almost seemed like responsibility and determination. call it the spirit of tucson.

you heard it from the president himself as he summoned the congress and the country to work on the nation's problems by transcending the bitter partisan differences that have so poisoned the debate. >> tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater. something more consequential than party or political preference. >> reporter: perhaps the most eloquent statement, the empty seat. a sign of solidarity with representative gabrielle giffords as she struggles to recover from a gunshot wound in a hospital in houston. >> what comes of this moment is up to up. what comes of this moment will not be determined about whether we can sit together tonight, but if we can work together tomorrow. >> reporter: the heart of president obama's speech was an effort to turn this moment to his advantage. to seize the political initiative as he confronts a new

congress reshaped by the republican triumph in november. and in a neat rhetorical trick, he began by calling on congress to put politics aside. >> at stake right now is not who wins the next election -- after all, we just had an election -- at stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this country or somewhere else. >> reporter: and that's where the president headed, to the overwhelming number one issue in the country, jobs. >> the unemployment rate rose again, hitting 9.8% in september. >> reporter: with millions of jobs lost in the recession with a country still anxious and sour about a step pid recovery, he called for significant new investments, new federal spending on basic scientific research, on clean energy, on education and infrastructure. >> we know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industry of our time. we neat to outenknow vat, outeducate and outbuild the rest of the world. >> reporter: called for a

million electric vehicles on american roads in four years. 80% of american energy from clean energy sources in 24 years. 100,000 new teachers. and to pay for it, the president targeted the oil companies. >> we need to get behind this innovation and to help pay for it, i'm asking congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. i don't know if you've noticed, but they're doing just fine on their own. so instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's. >> he also called for a spending freeze on federal domestic discretionary spending and issued a veto threat. >> both parties in congress should know this. if a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, i will veto it. i will veto it. >> reporter: and the president spoke, the members of congress seemed a bit more subdued than

in other years. nobody shouted "you lie." far from it. maybe their mingling together inhibited them. when the president called for immigration reform -- >> now i strongly believe we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration. >> reporter: the standing ovation gradually and awkwardly spread across the bipartisan seating arrangement. for all the talk and show of bi partisan ship, however, this was an ambitious speech from the president. >> america's the nation that built the transcontinental railroad. constructed the interstate highway system. so, over the last two years, we've begun rebuilding for the 21st century. a project that's meant thousands of good jobs for the hard-hit construction industry. and tonight, i'm proposing that we redouble those efforts. >> reporter: that spirit of tucson was no match for the partisanship sparked by the debate over health care, with republicans in the house having already voted to repeal the new health care law, the president defended it, while holding out

an olive branch. >> now, i have heard rumors that a few of you still have concerns about our new health care law. so let me be the first to say that anything can be improved. if you have ideas about how to improve this law by making care better or more affordable, i am eager to work with you. what i'm not willing to do is go back to the days when insurance companies could deny someone coverage because of a pre pre-existing condition. >> reporter: meanwhile, up in the first lady's box, the tradition continued. ordinary americans spotlighted in the speech to make an emotional point, like kathy proctor, who loved it. >> one mother of two, a woman named kathy proctor, had worked in the furniture industry since she was 18 years old. and she told me she's earning her degree in bio-technology

now, at 55 years old. not just because the furniture jobs are gone, but because she wants to inspire her children to pursue their dreams, too. as kathy said, i hope items them to never give up. >> reporter: it's striking how much this speech charted the change in the country. after a decade of war and talk of war and the sacrifices of war, president obama spoke of withdrawal from iraq and afghanistan and gays in the military. >> our troops come from every corner of this country. they're black, white, latino, asian, native american. they are christian and hindu, jewish and muslim. and yes, we know that some of them are gay. starting this year, no american will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love. >> reporter: at the end, president obama sought again to

bridge the partisan divide by appealing to the american dream and its role in his life and the lives of the men behind him, bringing tears, once again, 0 the eyes of speaker john boehner. >> that dream is why i can stand here before you tonight. that dream is why a working class kid from scranton can sit behind me. that dream is why someone who began by sweeping the floors of his father's cincinnati bar can preside as speaker of the house in the greatest nation on earth. >> by tradition, there is a response to the state of the union by the other party. there were more than one response -- there was more than once by the republicans tonight, and therein lies a story. the official response was delivered by congressman paul ryan of wisconsin, and here's a little of what he had to say. >> whether sold as stimulus or

repackaged as investments, their actions show they want a federal government that coms too much, taxes too much and spends too much in order to do too much. and during the last two years, that is exactly what we have gotten. along with record deficits and debt, to the point where the president is now urging congress to increase the debt limit. >> this year, a lot of the energy in the republican party comes from the tea party movement. and representative michele bachmann delivered a response in part on behalf of the tea party. >> for two years, president obama made promises just like the ones we heard him make this evening, yet still, we have high unemployment, devalued housing prices and the cost of gasoline is skyrocketing. >> the republicans focusing on the economy and on the debt and deficit in their responses. when we come back from this break, how does the president's speech rate? i'll turn to our experts for

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in its modern incarnation, the state of the union is a list of policy proposals, but ill signals about the state of affairs in washington and the country. it's the president that has to send the right signals. so, here with me, matthew dowd and cokie roberts, we're going to talk about how the president rated tonight, on content, style

and civility. cokie, start with content. serious time for the country. how did the president do? >> well, you're asking us to actually grade him, like teachers, and there is grade inflation in this country. but given that, i'd say about a b. not because it wasn't full of content, it was. there was a lot of -- a lot of things proposed in it, but when you look at the list, immigration reform, simplifying the tax code, trade agreements, reorganizing the government -- i mean, each one of those is a congress' worth of activity. to put them into one state of the union -- >> very ambitious agenda, kind of all over the map. >> and not doable. >> matt? >> well, yeah, it's hard to grade these but i would give him a c on this. >> a gentleman's c? >> right. i didn't get a unifying vision in this speech. i thought there was a lot of things in it and he touched a lot of buttons but there was no

sort of singular narrative. when you don't have that, most of the public sort of loses track of the details without that one singular vision and that's why i give him a c. satisfactory but not something that people are going to walk away, i remember that speech. >> a little boring? >> it was slightly boring. a little bit of a snoozer. maybe his goal -- i think part of his goal, especially with the energy in the room was to sort of put the capitol to sleep since he doesn't want to fight with them right now. >> okay, let's turn to style. president up there, commanding the bully pulpit. how did he do? >> i give him an a on style. and i actually thought there was a unifying theme and i thought of that more as style than content. and that is that america is great and america's best days are ahead of it and that's hardly something new. but it's not something we've heard enough from him. i think that he's been too

cerebral, something of a downer. all of that. i thought that sense of can do it-ness was very good. and i consider that style more than substance. >> what do you think? >> well, i'll do one step down from cokie. i give him a b on that. on style. >> tough grades from matt dowd. >> well, those are pretty good, slightly above average. i think he did okay. but i think because, again, because of the dynamics of the room, the style, there was no natural real good inflection points of this speech that he could get rousing applause and lift the country up. i mean, there was times when he got applause, but there was no real time sort of stylistic movement in it. i thought he did well. but i don't think he really moved the audience in that room. >> it's almost as if he speaks better to a group of 40,000 people than 400. and that brings us to our final point. civility. that's the theme of the moment, post-tucson. cokie, how did he do trying to

inaugurate that? >> i give him another a, but i think that he reached out to republicans, there were a couple of places where he made democrats happy, as well. saying we're not going to refight the health care debate, and we, he gave them, again, the 2% highest income people shouldn't have their tax cuts, all of that. but the civility really turned out to be something of a problem, and for me to say this is shocking because i'm definitely pro-civility. but the fact that the democrats and republicans were all sitting together stymied them. and they didn't know when to cheer and when to clap. they didn't know how to behave under these circumstances. and i think it made it hard to get any kind of electricity. >> people standing up and sitting down. what did you give him on ti civili civility? >> i give him an a on it. i think cokie is totally right.

i think the combination of the audience and his speech. i think there was 45 bipartisan applauses in that, which set a record for a speech. every time, if you remember the speech, every time he even ventured into a little bit of partisanship, he followed one a republican initiative, so, he would say, he would talk about don't ask don't tell and say, i think we should allow to recruit on a campus. health care, don't repeal the whole thing -- >> and malpractice reform. >> so, every time he would reach across, he would propose a bipartisan solution. i think in a followup from the tucson speech, this was an a for him. >> the republicans really have to be careful about not following through on that. and both of their responses were somewhat harsher than the president's speech. and i went back and looked at president truman's state of the union when he had been shellacked like this. and he called on that congress to work with him, and they did not. and then they lost big two years

later and he over -- and surprisingly won, so it's something they have to be careful. >> i agree. i thought the two speeches were way too partisan. the good news is hardly anybody saw them because of the audience dropoff from the state of the union. i think they're going to have to watch their tone. i think speaker gets it and how he's interacted with the president. i think some of his membership has to be brought on board. >> the white house wanted this as a turning point. do you think it will be for the president? >> i think tucson was the turning point for the president. and to the degree that this builds on tucson, i think it can be useful to him. >> i think the turning point was the licking he took on election day, and now he's now started clicking. and i think this is momentum builder onto what happened at the election. >> cokie, matt, tough grades, no

grade inflation. tonight, the president gets a report card from us. coming up, the members that camp on the aisle to get face time with the president. we're going to meet the perennial aisle hogs. dishwasher. [ male announcer ] twenty-four hour stuck-on food can be a huge project. but not for cascade complete pacs. with 70% more tough food cleaning ingredients, it's cascade's ultimate power tool for day old stuck-on food. ♪ [ jackhammer rattles ] [ male announcer ] cascade complete pacs. beyond your wildest clean.

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>> announcer: "nightline" continues from washington with terry moran. >> they may not stand in the doorways, but they sure do block the halls. call them aisle hogs. those members of congress who are so enthusiastic about greeting the president or perhaps be caught on camera shaking his hand that they arrive hours early, jockey mercilessly for position, all

for a seat on the aisle. and, some of them do it every single year. here's john donvan. >> reporter: think back on that speech tonight, the atmosphere, the familiar faces, the pres and the new speaker and the secretary of state and the justices, and this guy, from michigan. who? dale. he looks like this. he's an 18-term democrat. you remember. >> mr. speaker, the president of the united states! >> reporter: back at the start tonight, when the president entered by the center aisle, there he is, dale, let's slow it down now. and whoops, in a flash, the president's moved down the aisle, dale back there. but you know, last year, too, this is 2010 now, dale got nearly those same two seconds in the center aisle. and the year before that and the one before that and back and back and back and, you know what salon.com says that makes him, and a few other house members? >> the term we came up is aisle hogs. >> reporter: aisle hogs. that's not very nice. especially if you're one of the

democrats that salon is labeling the top five aisle hogs, like, say, dennis kucinich who shows up on the aisle in 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010. or jesse jackson jr., salon found him in 2004, '06, '07 and '08. but once salon reporter started spotting patterns -- >> here's dale. this is not only is he in it every year, this is the same spot. >> reporter: it did raise an interesting question. in a chamber with this many seats, how do you get those few seats on the center aisle where the spotlight may shine? >> get there early. if you want to get a seat there, you have to get there early. >> reporter: that's right. it is open seating for the state of the union. >> and by early inmean, you know, more than ten hours early and then ten hours early when the president comes in, maybe you're on tv for three seconds. >> reporter: ten hours for three seconds? what's that calculation? say, new york's elliott engel,

another top fiver on salon's list. visible in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008 and '10. here's what he was doing at 8:30 this morning. >> he found a place on the aisle where he wants to be tonight and he's camping out there for the day. this is like people waiting all night to get concert tickets or something. >> reporter: being in the audience is being on the show, as it was once again briefly tonight for congressman engel. and what about houston's sheila jackson lee? including when it was george bush walking down the aisle. not a plait call friend by any means. look at 2008. >> she greets them by saying "hey brother" and tries to say something to him and it becomes immediately clear that bush has absolutely no interest in getting caught in a conversation with her. >> reporter: but somehow it is worth it because -- >> if you really hit the jackpot, you get to shake your hand, maybe he'll tell you a joke and all your constituents back home, i guess, are going to

say you, say, wow, that's my congressman. >> my congressman? dale, after 18 terms, has been at this so long he's practically a state of the union institution. and who is to say, maybe he's here just because he can be, because it's an honor and thrill and nothing to do with who is watching as he flashes into frame and once again out. i'm john donvan for "nightline" in washington. >> the aisle hogs. thanks to john donvan and salon for that. when we come back, the president's performance. that's the subject of tonight's closing argument. but first, jimmy kimmel with what's coming up next on "jimmy kimmel live." jimmy? >> jimmy: tonight on the show, the great anthony hopkins is here. from "true grit," 14-year-old hailee steinfeld and music from delta spirit. "jimmy kimmel live" is next. there she is! 3q

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