Obama gets about the same number of flashbulbs as Hillary, but they linger as his speech continues.

“We are at that point where everything that needs to be said has been said, but not everybody has said it.” Mentions they have a vote at noon, so he may have to cut it short.

My first reaction to watching him speak is the fact that in person, you notice how lanky Obama is – he seems like a stick figure.

He tells a funny story about his kids attending his announcement speech, and asking on the way to the ceremony, one of them asking, “Daddy, what are we doing here again?”

Tells a story of a Maytag employee whose son needed a kidney transplant. (The son recieved it.) “It reminded me that in this country at this point, we are fighting two very different philosophies.”

Obama claims Bush’s philosophy is “you’re on your own.”

“If you’re a child who didn’t have the wisdom to be born of the right parents, you’re on your own. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.”

We have always been stronger when another philosophy is in place, that ‘we’re all in this together.’ … We know government can’t do everything, and we don’t want it to. But we know that it can do things that we can’t do on our own.”

It’s a lot of his standard stump speech. And the audience is certainly positive and welcoming, but it’s not responding with the vigor that greeted Edwards, or Biden, for that matter.

“Most of the problems that we face are not technical in nature… they are problems because our politics have failed us.”

He invokes the “prevention” magic wand to help control health care costs.

He repeats that the only thing preventing action is “a lack of sense of urgency.” It’s a nice line, but it’s just flat wrong. Both Republicans and Democrats feel a sense of urgency about the problems the country faces, but they have drastically different ideas about how to solve them, and each thinks the other’s ideas will make the problems worse.

He gets a surprising amount of applause for the line, “I was in Selma, Alabama recently… someone said to me ‘it was a wonderful celebration of African-American history.’ And I said, ‘it wasn’t a celebration of African-American history, it was a celebration of American history.’”

So far Obama is not bringing the house down the way I expected. It’s a fine speech, but if this is his standard effort, I’m a bit surprised that he’s gotten all the “Obamessiah” hype. Again, there’s nothing really wrong with his remarks to the union crowd before him; but he’s perhaps a bit too intellectual, a bit too rational, to a crowd that’s enjoyed some fiery rah-rah speeches so far.