Second-chance swearing-in goes flawlessly

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. got it right on the second try.

In the White House last night, Roberts privately readministered the presidential oath of office to Barack Obama. In public, in front of a worldwide audience on Tuesday, Roberts flubbed the oath a little, causing Obama to repeat the wording differently than is prescribed in the Constitution.

"We believe that the oath of office was administered effectively and that the president was sworn in appropriately yesterday. But the oath appears in the Constitution itself. And out of an abundance of caution, because there was one word out of sequence, Chief Justice Roberts administered the oath a second time," White House Counsel Greg Craig said in a statement.

According to the press pool report, Obama and Roberts met in the Map Room of the White House shortly after 7:30.

"We decided it was so much fun," Obama joked as Roberts donned his black robe.

"Are you ready to take the oath?" Roberts asked. "I am, and we're going to do it very slowly," Obama replied. After a flawless recitation, Roberts smiled and said, "Congratulations - again."

Obama replied, "Thank you, sir."

Unlike the first time, Obama did not use a Bible - on Tuesday, he placed his left hand on the Bible that Abraham Lincoln used for his inauguration - but the oath was binding anyway.

Two other presidents, Calvin Coolidge and Chester A. Arthur, repeated the oath because of similar issues, according to the Associated Press.

Roberts, a fellow Harvard Law School graduate, had been taking some heat for messing up the oath. Before swearing in White House senior staff members yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden said he had already forgotten that he had sworn in Cabinet members. "My memory is not as good as Justice Roberts'," Biden quipped, to pained laughter.

Obama has been more forgiving of the awkward moment. "We're up there, we've got a lot of stuff on our mind, and he actually, I think, helped me out on a couple of stanzas there. So overall, I think it went relatively smoothly, and I'm very grateful to him," the president told ABC News Tuesday night.