The Oath

by Posted on

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Barack Oba­ma for know­ing at least one sec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States bet­ter than the Chief Jus­tice of the Supreme Court. It would be hor­rif­ic to think that Jus­tice Roberts did that pur­pose­ful­ly to make it look like Oba­ma for­got the words he had just said. If Oba­ma had par­rot­ed Roberts the whole coun­try would be ablaze with the news that Oba­ma had got­ten it wrong, regard­less of Roberts’ blunder.

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3 Replies to “The Oath”

  1. My tran­script (and the video)
    My tran­script (and the video) says that nei­ther of them got it right. Does that mean he is not able to con­duct Pres­i­den­tial busi­ness? The Con­sti­tu­tion is very explic­it on the word­ing that must be spo­ken before he gets Pres­i­den­tial pow­ers. I bet they have a pri­vate redo of the swearing.

    Dad

    1. You’re right
      Wow, I watched that three times and did­n’t catch that Oba­ma then pro­ceed­ed to say it just the way Roberts did the first time.

      I bet they don’t redo it. When Taft admin­is­tered the Oath to Hoover, he sub­sti­tut­ed the word «main­tain» for «pro­tect» and as far as I know they did­n’t have a redo. What Roberts and Oba­ma said sim­ply swapped a word to the end of the phrase in a way that does not alter the mean­ing of the sentence. 

      1. You are prob­a­bly right, but
        You are prob­a­bly right, but the Con­sti­tu­tion is explic­it on the words that must be spo­ken, even plac­ing them in quotes. My guess is that they don’t need to redo it because they did it in prac­tice a cou­ple of times. The Con­sti­tu­tion does­n’t say they have to say it on TV.

        Dad

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