WASHINGTON (CNN) -- With President Bush's State of the Union address as a backdrop, the potential players in the 2008 White House race have begun to crowd the stage.

Nowhere was that more clear than in the Russell Senate Office Building rotunda Tuesday night. Halfway through Sen. Jim Webb's delivery of the Democratic response to Bush's speech, two of the party's top hopefuls were standing nearly side by side for separate network interviews.

While Sen. Barack Obama donned a microphone at the CNN camera position on one side of a column, on the other side was Sen. Hillary Clinton getting ready for an interview with NBC News. Just then, an elevator around the corner opened and Republican Sen. John McCain came darting out. He was just able to sneak past Obama and the CNN camera before the Illinois senator's interview began.

Clinton wasn't so lucky.

After her NBC interview ended, the "in it to win it" candidate was slated next for ABC, but there was a problem -- the ABC camera was on the other side of CNN's, where Obama was on live TV. The junior senator from New York cooled her heels for some five minutes before her counterpart from Illinois was done on CNN.

Little did Clinton know, but she was about to get revenge. Obama was slated to follow her on ABC, and since she was late, it was suddenly his turn to wait.

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