Obama retakes oath at White House after mix-up | Hacker News Reader

Obama retakes oath at White House after mix-up

cnn.com

11 pointsfrisco10 comments

Best part: this is the third time this has happened.

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/01/obama-takes-presi...

Sorry, I want to clarify:

He doesn't mean Obama had to take his oath of office three times, but instead that Obama is the third president to have messed up when saying the oath of office.

The media has been placing the blame for the imperfect oath on the Chief Justice, but the fault appears to be with the President.

In the clip of the Vice Presidential oath the first phrase is "I [name] do solemnly swear..." Both the Justice and the Vice President get it right. In the clip of the Presidential oath, the Chief Justice attempts to speak the full first phrase, but is interrupted in the middle by the President.

The President is the one who starts the deviation. The Chief Justice then goes on to mangle an important line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5VB4LgOH58

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EHOHe-_uQg

Indeed, and though you were voted down, the one major media article I read on this explained clearly that that was the case. However, the lede took great care to suggest the blame was the CJ's, before the article went on to clarify.

It makes zero difference, but it's an embarrassing illustration of the continuing non-existence of a dominant independent media, that they are so sensitive to protecting Obama against even the slightest image damage. Obviously, if this had happened during Bush's inauguration, the chortles would have been unceasing.

What you claim is obvious is not obvious.

One interesting point is that any constitutionalist strict enough to claim that the oath must be taken verbatim would pretty much be claiming nullification of every presidency. The oath as written doesn't include an allowance for the insertion of the President-to-be's name. It also doesn't include "So help me God," though since that falls after the oath it probably matters less.

Not appropriate for HackerNews :)

I thought the legal question was interesting.

It's really a story about breakage. It happens that a politician was involved, but it's not about politics.

Seems like a tough call to me (as in, I think it fits in this case). There was a fairly well commented story about the issue of the oath previously. This seems like a fitting follow-up.

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