10. Oath of Office Flub
We'll hit the hard hitting stuff after this, but let's start off light here. January 20, 2009. Like him or hate him, like I said, that was truly a great day to be an American, but some of the farther right critics said that technically it didn't happen. When Barack Obama stood at the nation's Capitol and took the oath of office with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts, Roberts misspoke during the oath bringing the ceremony to an awkward halt while the President-elect attempted to subtly correct him and keep the ceremony going. The mistake was corrected, and Roberts shook the President's hand in congratulations to uproarious applause. This slight mistake gave way to criticism from the far right saying that because the oath was "tarnished" (the best word I can think of for this) Obama was not the President of the United States. Whether the word "yet" was attached to that criticism, I don't know, but either way they're full of it and I can prove it.
The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin. -Amendment XX, The Constitution of the United States of America.
The flub happened at about 12:30pm, and I vividly remember watching on CNN where the ticker said something along the lines of: "By law, Barack Obama just became President, even though the oath has not yet been delivered. His term begins at 12 noon on January 20th." Of course the Constitution, our most sacred law in the land, still wasn't good enough for some. So why is this a questionable action on Obama's part exactly? Well... he listened to them. Later on in the week, as pictured above, the new President retook the oath of office in a corridor of the White House, so now there is no question that he is our commander in chief. Obama, now reaching the end of his fifth year in office, has skipped rope with the Constitution on more than one occasion but this time was kind of funny. That, ladies and gentlemen, was the closest thing to a transparent administration we've seen in the last 5 years, but I'll get to that. Hey, I said I would keep it light for the beginning, didn't I?