The Oath

Here's the video of Chief Justice Roberts administering the oath of office to Barack Obama:



Notice the flub? You're not the only one. The oath is short and prescribed in Article II of the Constitution as: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Jan Crawford Greenburg had this posted in within the hour, Chief Justice Fumbles. A few minutes before that, The World Newser wrote Chief Just Slip-Up. The law blogs were all over it too: WSJ Law Blog, the Blog of LegalTimes, and The Volokh Consipiracy.

So here's what happened:

1. in the first phrase "I Barack Hussein Obama do solemnly swear", Roberts paused in the middle and Obama started to repeat, and Roberts continued talking over him. But that worked out correct in the end.

2. Roberts misspoke the next part, moving "faithfully" to the end of the clause. Obama starts to repeat "that I will" and then pauses and nods as if giving Roberts the opportunity to correct himself. Roberts flusters but puts "faithfully" in the right place however Obama repeated what he first said, moving "faithfully" to the end.

3. While it's not in the oath it's been common to end with "so help me god". Some atheists were protesting this this year on the separation of church and state grounds. In a filed lawsuit a distinction was made between was the Chief Justice says and what the President says, allowing the President to end with a personal prayer. But in this case, I think at Obama's request, both said "so help me god".

At the luncheon, ABC news claimed that when greeting the President, the Chief Justice admitted it was his fault.

Now the conspiracy theorists can claim for all eternity that Obama was never properly sworn into office and isn't officially president.

Some of the posts I linked to above report about other flubs in the oath.

I'm just happy that whoever scheduled this thing made it early enough that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert can cover it tonight, though they had plans to do a live show at 11pm anyway.

Update: This is the funniest post on the topic: "To my mind, the flubbed oath at today's inaugural teaches one important lesson: The answer to the question, "How many former editors of the Harvard Law Review does it take to administer the Presidential oath properly?" is "More than two.""

Update: SCOTUSBlog adds Commentary: Was Obama's oath valid?