Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts thought he got blamed unfairly for errors administering the presidential oath of office to Barack Obama a decade ago.
Roberts fumed at the coverage of the Jan. 20, 2009 presidential inauguration oath snafu, according to a new biography, The Chief: The Life and Turbulent Times of Chief Justice John Roberts, by Joan Biskupic.
With combined millions watching in person and on television, Roberts misplaced a word in the oath, telling Obama to say: “That I will execute the office of president of the United States faithfully.” The word “faithfully” was supposed to appear between “will” and “execute.”
A bit of back-and-forth ensued between the nation’s top jurist and the incoming president, with each stepping on prepared lines of the other.
The mix-up quickly drew concerns from White House officials “about whether Obama had been properly sworn in,” writes Biskupic, a veteran Supreme Court reporter and CNN legal analyst. “The White House asked Roberts to administer the oath again the next day, so that the order of the words would be exact, and he readily obliged.”
The author suggests what seemed like an innocent mistake could have had more Freudian origins.
“Obama had, of course, voted against Roberts’s confirmation in 2005, and their politics were starkly different,” Biskupic recalls about opposition by Obama, then a first-year senator from Illinois, to the ascension as chief justice by Roberts, who had been nominated by President George W. Bush.
“Whatever the reason, Roberts bridled at reports that the mistake was his. He thought more should have been made of an Obama interruption of the chief at the very outset. Obama had immediately begun to repeat Roberts when he heard the prompt of, ‘I, Barack Hussein Obama,’ even though Roberts was going right into ‘do solemnly swear.’ Obama then repeated the full phrase. That false start likely threw Roberts off.”
The chief justice likely wasn’t amused by a quip the next day from the nation’s new vice president, Joe Biden.
Before swearing in White House senior staffers, Biden said he had already forgotten that he had sworn in cabinet members.
“My memory is not as good as Justice Roberts’,” Biden joked.
The remark drew a piercing glance from President Obama — the first of many over eight years between the disciplined chief executive and his loquacious vice president.
