So Help Me Dog

Okay, I’ll admit it. It probably is not as easy as it looks. For one thing, you gotta be careful to use the President Elect’s name rather than your own. It would not do for Barack Obama to start his oath with “I, John Roberts.” And then, there was the crowd. Mr. Justice Roberts is used to speaking before a few hundred people at the Supreme Court. Now he was facing more than a million. It could get one a bit nervous. Of course he could have read the oath rather than reciting it. Or, if he has difficulty reading in public, he could have printed it on a piece of paper and handed it to Mr. Obama to read. Perhaps it was the cold; perhaps it was the wind. Perhaps it wasn’t a mistake at all. Maybe it was Justice Roberts zinging one at the man for whom he mostly likely did not vote.

Was administering the oath to Mr. Obama the most important thing Justice Roberts has done so far in his career? Nope. Is it the most important thing he is going to do in the many years he will serve as Chief Justice of the United States? Nope. Is it the one mistake for which he will always be remembered? Yep. If this were a hundred years ago, in all likelihood no one would ever know of Justice Roberts’ gaff. Back then, only the people in attendance would have witnessed his mistake and only the few close enough would have even heard. But, poor Justice Roberts screwed up with hundreds of millions of people watching and listening. What’s worse, his blunder was recorded and will always be there to be viewed in generations to come.

Well, all’s well that ends well. President Obama is at the White House trying to get us out of W’s disaster. Justice Roberts is back at the Court just waiting for the opportunity to strike down Obama’s major legislation as unconstitutional.