Obama raises his hand to history, but the oath slip-up is nothing new

BARACK OBAMA’S first test as president came as he was being sworn in. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, got the presidential oath wrong.

“I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear,” Obama repeated after Roberts. But then the chief justice got the next part wrong: “that I will execute the office of President to the United State faithfully.”

He should have said “that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.”

Obama clearly realised the mistake because as soon as he said “that I will execute” he stopped and nodded at the chief justice as if inviting him to get it right. The chief justice then got it right, but Obama had already got it wrong when he uttered the word “execute” and then he continued not with the correction, but with what Roberts had mistakenly said initially.

Later the chief justice re-administered the oath at the White House without any TV camera. It was the third time in history that the president had to retake the oath.

Chester Arthur was sworn in hastily following the assassination of James Garfield in 1881, but he insisted on being sworn in formally after he arrived in Washington.

In the case of Calvin Coolidge, he was sworn in by his father, a notary public, after the death of Warren Harding in 1923, but he was not sure if this was proper, so he had a judge swear him in later — to be sure.

Obama’s inaugural address had no rhetorical flourishes, which probably made it all the more effective. It was surprisingly hard-hitting.

“On this day we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics,” he said. “The time has come to set aside childish things.

“Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decision — that time has surely passed,” he added. “The stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” he emphasised. “Those ideals still light the world and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.”

Nobody could have missed that he was blaming Bush for all those things, but there was some of Bush’s defiance in the speech, too. “We will not apologise for our way of life nor will we waver in its defence,” Obama said. “And for those who seek to advance their aims in inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us and we will defeat you.”

Yet he was holding out the hand of friendship. “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”

When the address was over, however, Obama accorded Bush unprecedented respect. He accompanied the former president down the steps of the Capitol and waited to see him off in his helicopter.

Other outgoing presidents were just forgotten and allowed to drift away quietly as the celebrations continued, especially when there was a change of parties.

In the more than half a century since polling began, only Richard Nixon had a higher disapproval rating than Bush on leaving office, while only Harry Truman had a lower approval rating. But Truman’s stock has been rising ever since and history now rates him as one of the better presidents.

It has been a tradition that the president-elect picks up the outgoing president and they drive to the inauguration together. Only three times in history has the president-elect not called on the president in the White House to go to the inauguration. In 1801, John Adams had gone home to Massachusetts before Thomas Jefferson was sworn in. Franklin Roosevelt wanted Herbert Hoover to pick him up at his hotel. Hoover refused, so Roosevelt called to the White House but he did not enter it as he was wheelchair-bound.

Roosevelt said he realised that Hoover was too busy to call on him at his hotel. “Mr Roosevelt,” Hoover snapped, “when you have been in Washington as long as I have been, you will learn that the president of the United States calls on no one.”

Dwight Eisenhower also wanted Truman to pick him up at his hotel. “A thing like that never happened before in American history,” Truman noted. “It indicated to me not only that he didn’t know anything about American history, he didn’t have anybody around who did either. He came to the White House to pick me up, but he wouldn’t get out of the car,” Truman added. “I wasn’t going to stand for it.”

Truman had a similar stand-off with General MacArthur in which he waited, and he would probably have waited for Eisenhower for the rest of the day, but Truman’s wife Bess — whom he always referred to as “the Boss”— blew a fuse. She said she had been in the White House too long and was not staying a minute longer.

“So I had to go out and get in,” Truman said. “We didn’t have much of a conversation on the way to the Capitol.”

“I was glad I wasn’t in the car,” the White House usher, JB West, later wrote.

This week millions went to Washington because they believed they were watching a defining moment in history. In a sense the Declaration of Independence of 1776 was finally being fulfilled. Countless millions would have watched around the world.

I thought back to a day in February 1964 in Texas when somebody came up behind me and asked if he could join me on the golf course. I was going to say yes, and then I noticed he was black. I had never seen a black person playing golf with a white person in Texas.

I THOUGHT to myself, “you didn’t come here to start new trends, but if you say no, then you have become a racist”. Maybe it only took a split-second before I agreed.

As we were playing the second hole, two white men playing another hole sneered — “nigger lover!”

When I got to the green, Zack asked if they had said something.

“They did,” I replied, without specifying, but he obviously knew.

“Does it bother you?”

“No, what narrow-minded people think never bothers me,” I replied. Less than 20 minutes earlier, however, I had thought twice over what narrow-minded people might think.

Thereafter, any time Zack was around, we played together. But we never played without somebody trying to insult one of us.

I would like to think I never let racist views influence me again, but my attitude towards the last election was frankly racist. I would have preferred Hillary Clinton to get the Democratic nomination because I did not believe Obama could win in view of the race issue.

The racial barrier has now been broken, just as Catholicism ceased to be a major issue after John F Kennedy became president. Race will never again be an issue in America. Tuesday was the defining moment in which America itself finally recognised the words of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.”