Today's column is a short interlude, or perhaps even intermission, from our usual political wonkery. This is due mostly to the fact that we're busy around ChrisWeigant.com Central preparing charts for tomorrow's "Obama Poll Watch" column.

Today, instead, we're going to pose a few stylistic grammatical questions to our readers, in order to see if our standards here are in need of adjustment or not. If that sort of thing is not your cup of tea, then you can check out this rampant speculation over who is jockeying to take over Harry Reid's leadership position in the Senate, should he fail to be re-elected this November, as it is about as wonkily fascinating as you can get.

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President Obama seems to have recently discarded the advice of timid advisors who bought into the media's "overexposed" myth last summer, and has hit the ground running in the past few weeks. Perhaps it is due to the re-emergence of David Plouffe, but for whatever reason, Obama has been out there talking to people again. He held a few town hall events surrounding his high-profile State Of The Union address last week, and then delighted many Democrats by entering the lions' den of the House Republican retreat on Friday, where he answered questions for over an hour -- with the television cameras rolling. He needs to cap off this recent communications strategy shift with something that has been missing for months -- a real press conference.

This doesn't (as a sop to the "overexposed" crowd) necessarily have to be a primetime event, either. It can be a little more informal than that, without the pomp of an evening press conference broadcast nationally on all channels. But it should be at least an hour long, and it should be held soon.

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As I sit down to write today's column... oh, excuse me... someone's at the door.

Phone problems? No, we're not having any phone problems, sorry. Tests? Well, OK, I guess you can run a test or two.

Sorry, where was I? Oh, right, today's column. Well, I have to say Obama's first State Of The Union address to a joint session of... what's that?

The punchdown block? You want to examine my phone system's main control box? But the phones are working perfectly... hey, wait a minute... can I see some identification?

Boy, that got rid of them quick!

Ahem. Where was I? Oh, right, last week. Last week, when conservative "journalists" weren't pulling fratboy pranks on federal property -- and getting arrested for such -- here's a tip to conservative "gotcha journalism" types: if you're going to do something this risky, might I suggest not doing it in a federal building where the F.B.I. probably has an office on the next floor? I mean, you're making it too easy, guys, really.

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The question on every political junkie's lips today is: "What did you think of Obama's first State Of The Union speech?" I don't have a single answer to that question, personally. I have some random reactions to different parts of the speech, so you'll have to forgive me for offering up such a mixed bag -- but then in my defense, I have to say the speech itself was a rather mixed bag.

Every president tries to pre-spin their speeches as "not a laundry list," and then winds up reading a laundry list anyway. I'm not sure what the point of this game is, but both sides do it equally. I'm not even sure why a laundry list is supposed to be a bad thing, unless it has to do with connotations of being boring. When you get right down to it, it's actually not even a "laundry list," for a couple reasons. One, nobody uses laundry lists these days. I've gone my entire life without ever laying eyes on a piece of paper that could be called a "laundry" list. When doing the laundry, who really needs a list? And secondly, a presidential State Of The Union is simply not akin to a laundry list, since the president is not exactly "airing his dirty laundry in public" or giving Congress instructions on how much starch to use when cleaning his legislative laundry.

The real term we should all be using is a "grocery shopping list," when you think about it. The president is going to the Congressional store with a list of what he would like on America's table. He reads the list, and then Congress attempts to put some of it in his shopping cart. This metaphor has a lot more going for it, is much more versatile, and everybody's used a shopping list at some point or another.

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The news from the White House for the past week, post-Massachusetts and pre-State-Of-The-Union, has had a decidedly Populist bent to it. So, when thinking about how to cover President Obama's first official yearly address to a joint session of Congress (last year's didn't count, officially), I thought it would be appropriate to check in with the Populist Caucus once again.

I first interviewed the Chairman of the Populist Caucus last year (Democratic Representative Bruce Braley, from Iowa) soon after their formation. He was graciously willing to talk to me today, and even suggested doing two interviews -- one before and one after the speech. So we will be presenting this article in two parts, which isn't exactly "liveblogging," but is about as close as you can get with someone who will actually be sitting in the room listening to President Obama speak tonight. I encourage everyone to check back here after the speech is over, to read Braley's immediate reactions to what Obama had to say.

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Today we are turning the column over to a State Of The Union speech from the past, to get everyone in the spirit for President Obama's first official State Of The Union speech tomorrow night.

It was hard to choose which speech to run, because I found a treasure trove of speech transcripts online (all the way back to George Washington in 1790), and therefore spent a few hours digging through many of them. I almost ran a speech from Teddy Roosevelt, just because of all the trust-busting language, but anyone who thinks Bill Clinton gave long speeches should check out one of Teddy's (if you think you've got the stamina for it).

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There has been an interesting alignment which has slowly happened over the past year, between two groups not normally in agreement -- inside-the-Beltway mainstream media types, and the bloggy Left. This alignment has occurred not in favor of some issue or another, but rather against a certain movement: the Tea Parties. Both the Serious Persons in the media, and pretty much the entire Left, have agreed that the proper thing to do with the Tea Partiers is to mock them, in the hopes that they'll go away soon. This, I fear, is a mistake, and it could be a costly one indeed for the Democratic Party.

Allow me to explain, because I'm about to stake out a position here that may not make me many friends. The Tea Party movement is currently hard to define and hard to pin down on the issues, but last month there was an extraordinary Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll which showed the Tea Party was seen more favorably than either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. Meaning that the sentiments driving the Tea Party movement are a lot broader than anyone in Washington may fully realize.

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I have to start off today apologizing to my Huffington Post readers for possibly wearing out my welcome there this week, since this will be my fourth post in as many days there. But it's been a heckuva week, that's my excuse. I started with two columns on the anniversary of Barack Obama's Inauguration and his first year in office (one with my thoughts, and one with two extraordinary essays from young Americans I attended the Inauguration with). But, while I was wallowing in the calendar, other things were happening.

That's right. This column was moved to 12:05 in the morning, and Jay Leno announced he'd be taking over the normal Friday Talking Points column.

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Today could be a pivotal moment in the administration of President Barack Obama. Because the White House seems to have decided that the theme of next week's State Of The Union address is going to be: "Populism."

To which, I say: it's about time.

It's about time to start fighting for the little guy and against the fat cats. It's about time to start fighting, when it comes right down to it.

To say, however, that this is what I expected Obama to do would be to monumentally overstate what my expectations were. What I really expected the White House's reaction to losing Ted Kennedy's Senate seat was the standard Democratic response to (sadly) just about everything -- moving further to the right. I expected the White House to sit down, read the polls which said "voters are angry about Democratic weakness," and immediately decide that they had to weaken their agenda even further.

It defies logic, but it's what Democrats usually do. Which is why it's exactly what I expected Obama to do.

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Today marks the one-year anniversary of President Barack Hussein Obama's term in office. I thought long and hard about how to mark this event, especially since I had travelled to Washington, D.C. myself last year, in order to attend Obama's Inauguration. Now, I know that there are other subjects (cough, cough... Massachusetts... cough) I should be writing about today. But the calendar is the calendar, and we'll certainly have enough time in the future to discuss the coming year and what it all means. For today, though, I'd like to take a look back. And a look forward, in two very different ways.

Because I am turning the column over today to two people I shared the Inaugural Day experience with, both of whom are less than half my age. I and my wife stayed with a D.C. friend who attended the Inauguration with us, who also brought along her high-school-age daughter. I also met up with a college student I know in the region, for lunch, after the big ceremony was over.

I approached each of them recently with a fairly wide-open invitation: write about what the Inauguration meant to you. No limits, just write what you felt. I got back two very different essays, and I would like to beg your indulgence to read both of them, as I think they are representative of what a lot of young Americans are thinking, and continue to think, about President Barack Obama. And of how they see the future.

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