Stumbling on the oath of office

There has been some controversy as to what happened when Obama took the oath of office. My view (as I noted on facebook) was that "The Chief Justice went without notes and stumbled. If I ever get to administer the oath of office, I think I'll use notes."

For a detailed analysis (with a few smart aleck remarks), it's worth looking at the following from http://www.electoral-vote.com/:

Obama Inaugurated Despite Big Screwup

At 1205 (five minutes late), Barack Obama took the oath of office. The five minutes don't actually matter. By law Barack Obama became President at noon, oath or no oath. A similar situation occurred after President Kennedy's assassination, when Lyndon Johnson didn't take the oath until he got to Air Force One at Love Field. But he was President from the moment Kennedy was pronounced dead.

Much worse was that the Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts, botched the oath as he gave it. Here is the dialog:

Roberts: "Are you prepared to take the oath, senator?"

Obama: "I am"

Roberts: "I Barack Hussein Obama"

Obama: "I Barack"

Roberts: "do Solemnly swear"

Obama: "I Barack Hussein Obama do solemnly swear"

Roberts: "that I will execute the office of President to the United States faithfully [sic]"

Obama: "that I will execute"

Roberts: "the off...faithfully the Pres the office of President of the United States"

Obama: "the office of President of the United States faithfully"

Roberts: "and will to the best of my ability"

Obama: "and will to the best of my ability"

Roberts: "preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States"

Obama: "preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States"

Roberts: "So help you God"

Obama: "So help me God"

Roberts: "Congratulations, Mr. President"

What a mess. Here is the actual oath required by Article II, Sec. 1 of the U.S. Constitution:

"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."

Mistake 1: Obama thought Roberts was going to pause for a response after "I Barack Hussein Obama" and started to repeat that, but Roberts kept going and added "do solemnly swear" while Obama was talking. Obama immediately stopped. When Roberts stopped, he then said "I Barack Hussein Obama" from the beginning.

Mistake 2: Roberts then said: "that I will execute the office of President to the United States faithfully." That's wrong. It has two gross errors in it. First, it is "President of the United States" not "President to the United States" (wrong preposition). Even worse, he put the adverb "faithfully" in the wrong place, at the end of the clause. Not only is in wrong there, but is also grammatically incorrect there. Obama knew his oath a lot better than Roberts and was flustered at that moment. He was probably thinking: "What a moron. He's Chief Justice of the United States and he can't memorize one sentence correctly? How did he ever pass the bar exam? But what do I do now? Do I recite the correct oath and make a fool of him in public? Or do I just repeat what he bungled? Geez, I have to make a decision in under 200 milliseconds. Tell you what, I'll just start and maybe he'll correct himself." So Obama said: "that I will execute..." and then stopped.

Mistake 3: At this point Roberts realized he messed up and tried to recover but he didn't know what to say, so he stuttered all over the place, emitting words from the sentence in a more or less random order, ending with "President of the United States" at least. Obama then recovered and said: "the office of President of the United States faithfully" which got the preposition right ("of," not "to") but put "faithfully" in the wrong place, just as Roberts did. So he chose not to embarrass the Chief Justice--by parroting him rather than reciting the correct
oath.

Mistake 4: They both got the "preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States" part OK, but then Roberts said: "So help you God." First, this is not in the constitution, but at this point the oath is actually finished so Obama could add it if he liked to as many Presidents have done, but Roberts said "So help ***you*** God" not "So help me God" as he should have. Obama is supposed to repeat his words, not translate them to first person singular on the fly. If Roberts actually believed his translation theory, he should have started by saying: "You Barack Hussein Obama" not "I Barack Hussein Obama." Roberts should have used "I" both times or maybe (arguably) "you" both times, but not one of each. So the Chief Justice of the United States is not capable of uttering a fairly straightforward sentence without four mistakes? One hopes he is better at his day job.

A video of the oath can be found here.

A few minutes earlier, Joe Biden took the Vice Presidential oath (which is not in the constitution) but it that went off without a hitch, probably because Associate Justice John Paul Stevens got it right. Here is the video.

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