You may have seen Supreme Court Justice John Roberts decided, out of caution, to re-administer the oath of office to Barack Obama tonight since they stumbled over the oath yesterday. When I first heard, my heart sunk for the 2 million people who thought they saw the history-making event of a black man become president. Hadn’t the experience been tainted now? Did we really witness Obama become president?
My answer: Yes. Why? For many reasons but because deep down I don’t think they so royally flubbed the oath of office as to make yesterday’s event invalid. Moving the word “faithfully” did not modify or change the sentence, so even though the word order was different than what appears in the Constitution, the word order that was said by Obama didn’t change the sentence structure. He uttered every word required by the Constitution. “Faithfully” still modifies the verb “execute” in the way Obama said it on Tuesday. Had “faithfully” been moved to a part of the sentence that wrecked the intended meaning or had been skipped all together, that would be a different legal question.
And word is Roberts and Obama re-took the oath out of caution, not because of some pressing national security need. And so deep down, yes, I can say with confidence I and 2 million others still saw Obama ascend to the presidency on Tuesday.
Update: Apparently, this has happened before. Calvin Coolidge and Chester A. Arthur had to re-do the oath of office for similar reasons, according to the Associated Press. I bet in 10 or 20 years this becomes a footnote in history and not much more.
