Obama is seventh US Prez to retake oath
Washington, Jan 24: President Barack Obama's awkward swearing-in ceremony and subsequent do-over of the oath of office drew a great deal of attention, but it did not make him the first president to take the oath without a Bible, as occurred during his second swearing-in ceremony on Wednesday, Jan 21.
According to records compiled by the Architect of the Capitol and maintained by the Library of Congress, Theodore Roosevelt did not use a Bible at his 1901 swearing-in, the Washington Post reported. And in 1963, when Lyndon B Johnson was sworn in on Air Force One at Love Field airport in Dallas after the assassination of President John F Kennedy, he used a Roman Catholic missal, a liturgical text.
"I
had
given
this
Bible
or
missal
to
the
judge
on
Air
Force
One,
which
I
had
taken
off
the
side
table
in
the
president's
bedroom
in
Air
Force
One," Democratic
strategist
Lawrence
F
O'Brien,
a
Kennedy
aide,
recalled
in
an
oral
history
interview
with
Johnson's
presidential
library
in
1986.
It
turned
out
not
to
be
a
Bible,
though
it
was
"a
book
with
a
cross
on
the
cover,
leather-bound"
and
new.
The use of the Bible at presidential swearings-in is a matter of tradition rather than law, according to experts. "That tradition just was begun by George Washington and has been pursued ever since, but there's nothing in the Constitution that says anything about a Bible," said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional scholar at Harvard Law School and an informal adviser to Obama.
The
oath
itself,
however,
is
the
only
oath
whose
exact
terms
are
specified
in
the
Constitution,
The
Post
reported.
But
Tribe
noted
that
when
it
has
been
misstated
and
not
corrected,
nothing
happens,
as
the
presidency
automatically
transfers
to
the
elected
successor
upon
the
departure
of
the
previous
president
from
the
White
House.
Obama is the seventh president to have restated his oath of office. Four Rutherford B Hayes, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight D Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan in 1985 restated their oaths publicly because in those years Jan 20 fell on a Sunday, meaning only private ceremonies were held on those Inauguration Days.
ANI