The Bungled Oath

There has been a lot of misinformation about how U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office to Barack Obama on Tuesday, January 20.

Here is the oath of office as it appears in Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 7 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."

Here is the how the oath might properly have been administered, with the words Chief Justice Roberts left out in brackets and the words he added in italics.

Are you ready to take the oath Senator? [Place your left hand on the Bible, raise your right hand and repeat after me:]

"I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will [faithfully] execute the office of President [of] to the United States faithfully and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help [me] you God."

Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts left out the call to place the left hand on the Bible, as has been omitted for the last several Presidents, and raise the right hand out of concerns that would imply he was making a voluntary religious gesture a requirement.

Barack Obama got a false start, speaking over the top of Chief Justice Roberts at the start of the oath, which I attribute to the Chief Justice’s error in omitting the words "repeat after me." When Barack Obama reached the words "will execute" he paused, realizing that the Chief Justice had gone wrong, and the Chief Justice tried to correct himself by interjecting "the off- faithfully the Pres- the office of President of the United States" before continuing with the rest of the oath.

When you paste it all together, here is what Barack Obama ended up reciting, which differs from the Constitutional text in the placement of the word "faithfully":

"I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will execute the office of President of the United States faithfully and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God."

I will observe that Barack recited all the words in the oath and moving the adverb "faithfully" to the end of the phrase does not change the oath's meaning. It seems to me no more violence has been done to the Constitutional text than is done by inserting the new President’s name or appending the phrase "so help me God."

In fact, an atheist activist filed a lawsuit back in December to prevent using the phrase "so help me God" but that was thrown out of court. That's a phrase that is commonly added in English-speaking countries when an oath is sworn in the traditional way on a Bible. Under the U.S. Constitution, a new President has the option to say "I affirm" rather than "I swear … so help me God" but only one President has done that.

Some commentators are saying that the U.S. Constitution requires that the oath be taken exactly as written, but "exactly as written" does not appear in the Constitution. Others say that Barack Obama became President at noon on Tuesday whether or not he took the oath. The 20th Amendment to the Constitution does state that the old President’s term ends and the new President's term begins at noon on January 20 and, but does not say that the new President can dispense with taking the oath.