When I heard that he'd be giving this speech, I thought it would be a great thing for my wife to enjoy and so I looked into how we could go. Here's a link to the cspan archives of his speech; you have to scroll until you get to Nov 7. The video quality starts off poor, but be patient. When it turned out she would be stuck in Canada, I decided to find a way to go anyway, so I called my Congressmen and Senators, asking them for information. Nobody had details, so I called a couple newspapers, congressional committees, until finally the office of the House Clerk told me that each Member of Congress would get two tickets, one for themselves, another to give away. My chances got a whole lot slimmer at that point. I called my Congressman (David Price, of the 4th District in NC), and my two Senators (Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr) to ask if I could have their extra ticket. Though I'm Democrat and the Senators are both Republicans, they were incredibly kind to me and did what they could, though with a whole state full of people to give tickets to, I obviously didn't make the cut. However, David Price apparently didn't have anyone else bugging him for the ticket, so on Monday night I got an email from his staff member saying I got the ticket! All of a suddent I had to make plans to leave for DC in a day. I called my Aunt Mere who lives in the Virginia suburbs south of DC and she said I could stay with them.
So the next afternoon, after voting in the Chapel Hill town council elections, I got in the car and drove 4.5 hours to their house. The next morning I rode the train into DC, picked up my ticket in the Rayburn office building, read through the Washington Post in the staff cafeteria, then headed over to the Capital. It took 25 minutes to have a background check before I was let up into the gallery at 10:40. The Senators filtered in around 10:50, and Sarkozy came in around 11:05. It was amazing to be in the House chambers for a Joint Session of Congress, to see the most important people in the nation (other than some notable absences, like Clinton, Obama, Dodd, Biden, McCain, who were all out campaigning). I did see Pelosi, Kerry, Kennedy, Hatch, Sec. Kempthorne, Sec. Chertoff, and tons others.
As for the actual speech, Sarkozy is a powerhouse. My translation thing didn't work, and the sound wasn't turned up very loud, so I had to struggle to hear and understand, but I did alright. He received lots of applause and I thought he did a fantastic job. I'm very curious to hear more about how the French people are responding to his efforts to strengthen the Franco-American relationship.
I spent the afternoon attending a Senate Judiciary Committe, an extremely important and prestigious committee with oversight jurisdiction over the whole federal judicial branch of government. This room, Dirksen 226, is where all the Supreme Court Justices have been confirmed. The actual meeting wasn't that interesting to me, but it was a great way to end my day.
As it turned out, my mom was in DC for a meeting, and was able to get a hotel room with 2 beds for the same price, so I stayed an extra day and hung out with her. It was great to go out to dinner with her and stay up "late" talking, as well as have a nice breakfast with her. Of course, as great as it was to be there and with mom, it was so great to hit the road and drive practically straight to the airport to pick up Sarah, who I hadn't seen in over 3 weeks!!!
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