Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Swearing in goof up.

OK...I know everyone was nervous and all that, and yes, I'm a Barack supporter...but come on, the whole swearing in thing is 2 minutes long..rehearse it maybe once before you do it in front of 5 billion peeps! Oh well.
Posted by at

1 comment:

Deena said...

Just felt I should clarify that the goof up was not Obama's fault...

After the flub heard around the world, President Barack Obama has taken the oath of office. Again. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the oath to Obama on Wednesday night at the White House — a rare do-over. The surprise moment came in response to Tuesday's much-noticed stumble, when Roberts got the words of the oath a little off, which prompted Obama to do so, too.

The original, bungled version on Tuesday caught observers by surprise and then got replayed on cable news shows.

It happened when Obama interrupted Roberts midway through the opening line, in which the president repeats his name and solemnly swears.

Next in the oath is the phrase " ... that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States." But Roberts rearranged the order of the words, not saying "faithfully" until after "president of the United States."

That appeared to throw Obama off. He stopped abruptly at the word "execute."

Recognizing something was off, Roberts then repeated the phrase, putting "faithfully" in the right place but without repeating "execute."

But Obama then repeated Roberts' original, incorrect version: "... the office of president of the United States faithfully."

Craig, the White House lawyer, said in a statement Wednesday evening: "We believe the oath of office was administered effectively and that the president was sworn in appropriately yesterday. Yet the oath appears in the Constitution itself. And out of the abundance of caution, because there was one word out of sequence, Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the oath a second time."

The Constitution is clear about the exact wording of the oath and as a result, some constitutional experts have said that a do-over probably wasn't necessary but also couldn't hurt. Two other previous presidents have repeated the oath because of similar issues, Calvin Coolidge and Chester A. Arthur.

The entire Associated Press article is located at:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gvwcUbiSH7YVjguRrvCCelkC2J-wD95RT32O1

January 21, 2009 at 11:01 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)