Many people have written to ask why I ignored Gary Locke's response. It's a good question.

Why? Because I didn't watch it. I read it, but there's something horribly painful about watching someone make a speech into a camera. Seriously, there has to be a way for the opposition party to put together an audience for their rebuttal, if only to make things a bit more natural for the speaker.

The speech itself was fine, and I particularly liked the fact that he discussed OBL high up in the speech. Too bad that 99.7 percent of people had already tuned out at that point.

In retrospect, Daschle's and Pelosi's pre-buttal looks even more brillaint -- capturing attention during the (news) calm before the SOTU storm, putting Bush on the defensive.

Don't get me wrong -- I love Locke. I just think the format of the rebuttal can't make anyone look good.