In Washington, there are not many occasions of British-style pageantry, pomp and circumstance, however, the quadrennial Presidential Inaugural is an exception and so is the annual State of the Union address that the President delivers in the House chamber before the Members of the House and Senate.

The audience also includes the President’s cabinet, the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the diplomatic corps. Each Member of the House receives one ticket for a guest to be seated in the balcony. I took my daughter Kirsten.

Since Samoa News already covered the substance of President Obama’s remarks, I am not going to summarize them here nor am I either going to praise or criticize the speech.  Perhaps one might think that as a member of the Republican National Committee, I should be attacking the President reflexively but in my role as an RNC member promoting the election of more Republicans, I do not believe I have to attack Democrats to achieve that objective.

Nor do I want to critique the speech as your Member of Congress. I am in the process of building friendships in both parties to accomplish our goals, not erect barriers. Sometimes in the past I think we may have “punched above our weight” by trying to join a national partisan chorus and received very little in return for it.

Suffice it to say that I applaud the goals of many of the proposals the President made (who can be against tuition-free community college education?) but worry about how they will be funded. Tax increases are not in the cards, I don’t want to see us borrow more from China and I certainly don’t want to see money shifted from current programs to fund new ones since we might be negatively impacted. Enough said about that.

What I am trying to do in this space that Samoa News has graciously provided me is to give you a little of the flavor of what happens behind the scenes on State of the Union (SOTU) Day. Having been on House Leadership Staff for ten years, I am familiar with the process but only as a staffer on a day such as this: always from the outside looking in. From the inside, it looks much different.

First, the Secret Service pretty much shuts down the Capitol Building in late afternoon so they can do a “security sweep” to make sure there are no bombs or other devices that might endanger the President. After that process was completed Republican Members were invited to a buffet dinner in the Majority Leader’s office and I imagine the Minority Leader has something similar for her Members, although her office is much smaller ― but, then again, she has fewer members to accommodate. On the way to the House Chamber, we stopped by the Lincoln Room in Majority Whip Steve Scalise’s suite for some dessert.

Besides the convenience of not having to have a meal elsewhere before making our way to the Chamber, occasions like this always provide additional opportunities to raise American Samoa’s profile and to get better acquainted with my colleagues. Happily, my tablemate was Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL), the chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, on which I serve. We had a good chat that was timely, because the first meeting of the Committee was the following day, and I had the opportunity to tell him that veterans constitute almost 10 percent of our population ― a fact that will stick in his mind and a point I made again the following day during my opening statement at our hearing before questioning the VA deputy secretary.

Dinner and dessert finished, I parted ways with my daughter, who went up to the gallery to watch the proceedings while I entered the chamber by the middle door, which is the door the President uses when he makes his grand entrance just before speech time. Even though it was still an hour before speech time, I wanted to situate myself and found there already were about 30 members standing along both sides of the center aisle all the way down from the door to the well of the House.

The media has given this group the name “Aisle Hogs” because they tend to be many of the same Members every year who position themselves to be able to shake hands with the President (and be seen on national television in the process) and the other dignitaries who precede him to special seating in the front rows. I decided not to do that because, as a courtesy to give my Democratic colleagues the first opportunity to greet a President of their own party when he comes to their home. Besides, I understand Members need to show up several hours in advance to stake out and hold an aisle seat and I did not want to devote all that time to being there just to get a center aisle seat.  I just wanted to be as close to the front as possible even if it was not near the aisle.

As it turned out, I was invited to take one of the front rows anyway and was seated directly behind Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the House Ways and Means Committee chairman. Among other things of interest to American Samoa, Paul’s committee has jurisdiction over legislation that provides tax breaks to our canneries, so it does not hurt for me to get to know him better.

Even though I had not planned it, I was close enough to the center aisle to be able to briefly shake hands with the President as he strode by. He spotted the gardenia in my hair and my puletasi and greeted me with “aloha” when I shook his hand and said, "Talofa Mr. President!"

Those who watched the almost 90-minute speech on television would have noticed that on many occasions when he delivered applause lines, Democrats gave him standing ovations while Republicans sat silently. This is standard, and when a Republican President gives a SOTU address, the roles are reversed. It is most obvious when the Vice President, a Democrat, stands to applaud, while the Republican Speaker remains seated. Both men are seated directly behind the President and are highly visible to television viewers.

Afterwards, the President retraced his steps down the center aisle, where he once again encountered the “Aisle Hogs,” many of whom presented their copies of his speech to be autographed.  Once he completed his remarks, I did not hang around. Rather, I joined other members at the nearby Capitol Hill Club to watch Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) deliver the Republican Response to the President’s address. Except right on the floor where Member photography is not permitted, I was able to get photographs that I put into an album you can view on my Facebook Page, if you are a Facebook friend of mine.

If you missed the speech, you can watch it on a computer at C-SPAN.org. Whenever the camera in the back balcony is taking a long shot of the President speaking, you can spot me in the right hand corner of the screen by looking for my gardenia.

It was a terrific evening and I am going to look forward to doing it again next year