On Wednesday, Oct. 25, I had the opportunity to watch the taping of “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, third row, center, 30 feet from President Barack Obama.

Before Stewart entered the stage, comedian Paul Mecurio came out to pump up the audience for the taping. He called himself “The Warm-Up Monkey.”

“When [Stewart] says something funny, you can’t laugh like you do at home: ‘Ha, ha, this marriage is going to be great,'” he said, meekly chuckling. “You have to laugh gutterally, because you are the people who will influence how people react to this at home.”

Mercurio explained that the show has no laugh track, so the humor perceived by the audience-at-home  is largely based on the laughs of the studio audience. I pondered this as he made a more direct cracks at audience members, and, as Mercurio intended, I became more and more excited to see Stewart and Obama.

The audience members were on their feet as soon as Stewart came out onto the stage. To help appease the endless cheering, he decided to take a few questions from the audience.

“Who’s your favorite Congressman?” an eager young man asked.

“Only in Washington…,” Stewart said, sighing. “When I film in New York, I usually get questions like ‘If a robot was battling a shark, who would win?'”

After the sporadic laughs at his responses, Stewart needed to start the show.

He initially wanted to begin the show with a segment he called “Let’s Keep the President Waiting” by doodling and fooling around to waste time, but due to the length of the interview with Obama, the introduction had to be re-filmed. Stewart’s producer voiced that he hoped there would not be a continuity issue with the new introduction.

“Yeah, for this intro I should wear a mustache,” said Stewart in response, jokingly.

[If you look closely, you’ll see that papers magically appear on Stewart’s desk after Obama enters the shot.]

Once the President came on screen, however, the jokes were sparing. Stewart straightforwardly questioned Obama about health care reform, unemployment and the condition of the American people. Obama clearly and calmly stated his opinion on the progress we’ve made, listing his achievements and restating that the reforms were never going to make widespread change overnight.

“I am feeling great about where the American people are, considering what we have gone through,” said Obama. “We have gone through two of the toughest years of any time since the Great Depression . . . There is still a lot of good stuff happening, but people are frustrated.”

While Stewart struggled to not interrupt the President with his multitude of questions (“It’s just so hard not to talk!” he said, biting his lip), the interview got Stewart’s point across – we are not there yet, but we are on the way.  The 22-minute interview was very interesting and ended with Obama’s plug to vote on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 2.

After the taping, Stewart voiced his spiel to the audience for the Rally to Restore Sanity, which took place on the National Mall on Saturday, Oct. 30. Despite several audience questions, he kept mum on the specific details of the event.

“When you are waiting for someone to propose, you don’t ask how he is going to do it. You just go with it,” said Stewart.

“You might not get everything you want [from the rally],” he said. “But, to quote the Rolling Stones, you just might ‘get what you need.'”