Did Roberts flub the administering of the oath of office on purpose?

tbh I’d say Obama got it wrong.
But I don’t think that’s anything to worry about, if anything it’s great.
It shows he’s just like the rest of us :)

According to abc he apologized and said it was his fault.

It’s a conspiracy!

It more looked to be Obama to me, but it was hard to tell. I thought it was quite cute. Can you even imagine what it would feel like to be him at the moment? Ridiculously surreal. There are parties in Leeds (near where I live in England) tonight in the wake of the inauguration. The whole world was watching today, that’s pretty crazy.

Roberts said it wrong, Obama tripped over it and a recovery was made. I think that’s all there is to it.
Edited to say I don’t know if Roberts said it wrong first or Obama, my point being it was just an accident.

I think it was probably an accident all around. Nerves were most likely running high for everyone involved, simply because of how important today is. Ignore the haters, they’re being left in the dust anyway. :)

They both messed up. Obama was overeager, and started to repeat after Roberts too early. Then, Roberts put the adverb “faithfully” at the end of the phrase, as opposed to the beginning.

No biggie. He is still the President, after all. Just getting an early start on being lampooned on the fake news shows.

Yes, they both flubbed. ‘S all right!

After re-watching it, I agree with @shilolo and @elijahsuicide.

i agree, it clearly looked like obama knew how it should be recited, but i count it a moment to be overlooked. grant it, ore than a million people there were hanging on every word spoken. i can imagine the pressure to say anything “right” when te entire world is loking on.

also notice biden when he took oath: dude judge is reading and biden has to say it back with that little “kazoo” martian on his shoulder saying “don’t mess this up big guy.” lots of pressure on both of them.

jeez, excuse my spelling—overwhelmed today obviously.

Yah, the initial phrase where Roberts tried to put in a comma big enough to drive a truck through… of course Obama spoke up.

Then the second phrase where it seemed Roberts couldn’t figure out how to order the words after 2 or 3 tries. Obama pulled that portion off with a deal of grace.

They both really needed to practice. And I’d’ve expected that the individual phrases themselves would’ve been choreographed better… with the length of phrase being dictated by the president elect in advance.

In short, no… not on purpose. In my opinion, just excitement and lack of preparation.

Roberts screwed it up. Whether it was on purpose or not, I don’t know. Seemed like maybe it was. Obama responded perfectly, in my opinion. Roberts was babbling non-English, and Obama said what there was to say.

I think that the word for “an endearing and small error is mistake” is actually called a “fluther.”

Did you see when Roberts fluthered the oath?

Listen people, Roberts screwed it up, but it looked like Obama did because he is the one who stopped. But Roberts was having him recite the oath the wrong way, and Obama fixed it. I really don’t think it was mean spirited or some kind of under handed jab from the bush administration. I mean you can try and over analyze it and listen to pundits try and throw shit into the fan but at the end of the day it was just a mistake. Do you really think Roberts wanted one of the things he would be remembered for during his career as cheif justice was screwing up Obamas inauguration. Def not.

I’m glad everyone believes it wasn’t intentional. I didn’t even question it at first until I saw the reaction of the rabid right wingers who were just itching for any opportunity to cast aspersions on Obama. It was hard for me to believe that on this one day, people could be so cynical that they jumped all over something so insignificant, and then to have it be the result of something someone on their team actually did, it just made me think…you know, even though it was a Republican who screwed this up, people, including MOST liberals are going to think Obama screwed up…just couldn’t have worked out better for them if they’d tried. Then I thought, well, maybe they DID try. I don’t believe it, but I just wanted the perspective of the collective.

@dalepetrie Hrm. You have to imagine how people would react if this was McCain though. It would be like a hallmark of a second Bush already butchering his public speaking. There’s always groups of individuals that will pull apart silly things like this, no matter who it is.

@richardhenry Or, he was having a senior moment.

Another thing I find so interesting is how much some people want to stay in that old world of bickering and disagreeing on everything, even if there is no substance…made me almost physically ill to hear people worrying about that after having heard the tone of Obama’s speech. As I heard it, if you were to give that speech an honest assessment, you’d either have to be far to the left or right fringe not to agree with what he said. Then people start sniping that Obama screwed up just like he’s gonna screw up the next 4 years and yada yada yada. And then someone else on Political Wire pointed out that when Obama said something about 44 people taking the oath, he was factually wrong because Cleveland was both the 22nd and 24th President. I mean…it seems Obama wants to move on, it seems most liberals AND conservatives want to move on, it seems like we have leadership that will listen to all points of view before making decisions…where’s the problem? I don’t expect to agree with everything he does, I don’t expect anyone to agree with absolutely everything he does.

And I just saw richardhenry’s quip, and I have to agree, as I said, I don’t think this is a function of the left disagreeing with whatever the right does just for the sake of disagreeing, nor vice versa. I think however there are people now conditioned on both sides because of the divisive nature of Bush’s Presidency that they have become unwilling (or unable) to engage in honest intellectual debate. And I guess it brings up the point to me, if a person who can articulate his thoughts, who governs in a fairly moderate (though admittedly somewhat left) manner, who seeks to include people of all ideologies, who calls for us to make decisions based on what needs to be done and not ideology, if that person can’t make those people just calm down and take a breath, who can?

Even if something like this had happened to Bush, whom I despise, I would not have even thought this was his fault, because I was expecting Roberts to say one thing, he said another, and as a thinking person, I wouldn’t know if I was supposed to recite it the right way or the way he said it or wait for him to correct himself or what. I have no doubt that many on the left would have.

But I wonder, if this had happened to Clinton in his first term, or GB1, or Reagan, would we even be having this conversation? Would people have really still made hay about it?

I think continually and repeatedly blaming the Bush administration and “rabid right-wing republicans” as the root cause for divisiveness is itself a divisive tactic.

I heard Tom Brokaw refer to Cheney being limited to his wheelchair as being fodder for Dr. Strangelove comments. He was just postulating at the time, not reporting and what do you know? It came true… right here on Fluther.

John Gruber on his Twitter feed, made snarky comment on Cheney’s condition, too.

My point is, for every so-called rabid right-wing Bush nut you want to point a finger at, there’s every bit the same on the opposite side, too.

And just because Obama won the election doesn’t make those people correct in their negative statements. It just makes them appear graceless and mean.

—

Today was a great day in America. Our country, the most powerful ever, has for the forty-fourth time (or thereabouts) smoothly transferred the reins of power from one leader to the next. That’s what I’m proud of. And Obama made it look easy. Good for him!

Heres the thing, and maybe this is a biased view, but I feel like the G.O.P. is much quicker to jump on something like this and try and turn it into something. I feel like I am in junior high all over again when I listen to some of the things the republicans try to conjure up against the democrats. I am sure the democrats are not innocent of this either, it just seems to me that the republicans go out of their way to attack the dems more on trivial issues. I wish I had more examples of this happening but I usually dismiss the childish finger pointing pretty quickly. If this happened to bush, bush senior or Reagen I don’t think people would have even thought twice about it. But if Clinton had done it, they would have tried to impeach him on the grounds that it was not a constitutional oath. I know thats exaggerating a little, but I honestly wouldn’t have put it pass the G.O.P. back then.

I agree robmandu, and I don’t think of all Bush supporters (and certainly not all conservatives) as “rabid right-wing Republicans.” I think of the people on the website who were commenting just all sorts of nasty things (it quickly degenerated into calling him Hussein, and claiming he’s not an American citizen, and blaming him for the drop in the Dow today, and talking about how our long national nightmare will be over in 4 years) as rabid right-wing Republicans, because that’s what they are demonstrating themsleves to be. And I have every bit as much disdain for the liberals who couldn’t let it go and had to boo Bush when he was on the teleprompter or make snide remarks about Cheney’s wheelchair. It happens on both sides. I will however contend that I think when Republicans impeached Clinton, things really started to get out of hand, and when Bush came along and pretty much opted for a win at any cost, slash and burn candidacy, followed by a bitter election contest in which Bush was appointed rather than duly elected (for the sake of not starting an arugment, I’m speaking technically here, not about what should have or should not have happened), followed finally by a Presidency where the power of both the Presidency and Vice Presidency were greatly expanded and whether Bush got his way via a Congress that voted lock step with him, or whether he went around Congress via signing statements, one thing that I don’t think you can dispute is that Bush thought of himself as the person who makes the decisions, and had very little interest in hearing, much less considering dissenting viewpoints. And when this was backed up by Fox News and talk radio pundits who chastised and demonized any dissenters, it created a sense among those of us who did not agree that we were not being listened to, and created a sense of superiority and entitlement among those who felt that Bush should be able to make decisions without being questioned by those they considered to be “loonies”.

The name calling and partisanship really got out of hand, and my point is, those who have allowed their better nature to be corrupted by this tone can not seem to get beyond it. And it makes me wonder how we ever get back to a point where we can have honest discussion about our disagreements, where that can be the norm and where the partisan voices (from either side) do not drown out those calling for reason and moderation. I know there are plenty who would say to me, “well, you’re guy won, it’s easy for you to say let’s all just get along, but I didn’t hear that coming from the left when Bush was President.” To that I say, though you have a point, the voices of those who just wanted to overthrow Bush were drowned out by the voices of those of us who just wanted our leadership to hear and consider all sides of any issue before making a decision. I could have supported Bush if he at least appeared to listen to and consider dissenting opinions, but I never got a sense that he had any regard for any opinions other than those of his administration.

So, now the easiest thing in the world to do would be to say, “suck it neocons”, because essentially every time I’ve spoken up in the last 8 years I’ve been told “suck it pinko”. But I don’t want to do that…yet it seems that there are still so many people who just want to fight the same fights over and over again, and so rather than engage in debate over something of importance, they latch onto something like a flubbed oath, or a wheelchair bound VP. As big a fan as I am of free speech, I just wonder if some of these folks need to be marginalized. I have not been a fan of doing that because I think it’s marginalizing people’s opinions is what leads us to this situation in the first place. But the question is, if they have not yet been reached, is it ever going to be possible to reach these people, or is it fighting a losing battle? If it’s the later, I might as well just start saving myself time and telling them to suck it.

Obama did vote against the conformation of Roberts.

Just sayin’

I didn’t read the responses because I’ve got a busy week, but I saw Obama stop as soon as Roberts said it wrong too.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Roberts did flub it purposely, but what real gain would be had from doing so? He probably just didn’t care to read it over ahead of time like Obama obviously had.

“Wouldn’t be surprised if he did?” And oh, the guy who’s got a lifetime tenure to office is gonna hold a grudge against the junior senator, now president, just for “voting against his confirmation”?

Sorry, but seriously, if you think it’s even slightly possible that Roberts would go out of his way to make himself look like an idiot just so he can hope to trip up Obama…. well, there’s just no reasoning with you folks… you’re too blinded by your hatred of the “dark side” that you’ll buy absolutely anything.

And from what I’ve read to date, that’s exactly the kind of behavior you abhor. It’s precisely what you rail against so vociferously in presidential campaigns and California propositions and school education plans.

Thing is, I hold many of you long-time flutherites in high regard. I can accept difference of opinion. We don’t have to agree. But this mean-spirited, contemptuous attitude is getting really frickin’ old.

If you’re over 18, then please. Grow. The fuck. Up.

@robmandu – wow, all i said was that I wouldn’t be surprised, not that I thought he had done it intentionally. if the past eight years have shown me anything, it is that Bush’s appointees shouldn’t just be assumed to be innocently working for the common good. I don’t see why he would do it just to be snarky, but I still wouldn’t be surprised.

I was surprised to find out that Colin Powell couldn’t be trusted fully either.

I noticed the flub also. On a lighter note, payback’s a motherf***er. Bush gave his going away speech and within minutes Obama just had to give a speech on the economy right before the weekend to steal the press coverage from Bush. Not very classy and a total lack of respect for the office.

@robmandu You are my new hero. Your last statement said it best.

In my adult life, I have supported democrats and republicans. It always seems as if the other side is being more callous. Both Obama and Roberts made mistakes, it’s that simple. Nobody is perfect.