This morning I got up at 4:15 AM to make it to the President's 7:15 AM speech (you're supposed to be there 2 hours early). There was a huge mob waiting in line when I got there at a little after 5 AM, but very little was happening beyond the Secret Service perusing the area.

It took a while to even find the media entry and the people didn't seem to know how we were supposed to get in there. But, eventually, they just told us to "go with the flow" and I hooked up with a reporter from FrontLineMag and we just barged our way to the front of the line and got in.

Despite the confusion, we got pretty decent seats by about 5:45 AM. I was next to some college students who literally left their hotels at 3:45 AM and got there at 4 AM. They were jacked up out of their minds to hear the President speak -- in fact, I think most people were pretty excited. The crowd cheered each person who walked onto the stage to sit down, the crowd cheered the placement of the presidential seal on the podium, they even cheered the guy who put Bush's note on the podium.

Then when Bush finally spoke, he got a raucous welcome -- the crowd just loved him. It was sort of a legacy/why it's so important we have a Republican President in 2008 speech. I got the whole thing on video, it ran about 40 minutes, so I'll probably just post a mash-up on Monday.

PS: Michael Steele is wildly popular. He was on the stage and got the biggest round of applause for the morning other than the one the President received. It's too bad they didn't make him the RNC Chairman. He could have made a real difference.