Is it out of the norm for those honored by the President in the SOTU (a tradition started by Reagan) to be sitting in the same section (in this case, directly above)?
They may have been seated near each other to show the obvious contrast between the liberators and the liberated. That's not theater; that's political reality and should be re-inforced. Or that may have just been protocol. Somebody should look at past SOTU speeches to see; regardless, merely placing the women near each other suggests nothing in regards to "staging" in order to produce some "magic moment".
The issue is the hug: I don't think anyone saw that coming and if you're not debating that, then your overall point really has no merit. But what you seem to be saying is that the PR guys (as Chrissy calls them) put these gals next to each other because they "expected some magic" and I think that's a little more than a stretch. If anything, they just expected the two women's mere presence to speak for itself.
"Maybe some people just don't like to see the man behind the curtain."
And we all know who the "evil genius" is don't we?
No it's perfectly within the norm. It's also perfectly within the norm for those being honored by the President to be getting those honors as part of the message to the American people of the SOTU. This is very expensive TV time, live broadcast on all the major networks and cable news channels, you don't just introduce people for fun.
They were seated near each other because that's where the guest VIPs sit. The interesting question is why were they not previously introduced. Even if there was no meet-n-greet before the speech at the very least you'd expect that Laura, a person who has displayed great social grace, would do the normal polite thing and introduce everybody in the VIP box to each other, and normal introductions generally have a sentence or two about the person. You don't just say "this is Bob" you say "this is Bob from accounting". And yet that didn't happen in this case, as the Marine mom says, they hadn't been introduced. Things like that don't happen on accident, things like that happen when short guys with clipboards say "do us a favor and don't introduce them, let W handle it during the speech".
I don't think anyone KNEW it was coming, but I garauntee some guys with clipboards HOPED it was coming. That's how these kind of TV moments happen, nobody KNOWS but everybody HOPES. Because when you know then that means it's fully scripted and will come off stilted and it won't have the proper impact, but when you hope it means you're sewing the seeds and if something happens it's purely spontaneous and much more meaningful.
The man behind the curtain was neither. He was just some guy, who'd built a big rep. Of course in TV land they don't even get the big rep, they're just some guy working their butts off for less money than the on screen talent and the only reward being those occasional perfect TV moments.