Photo by Pete Souza, White House / MCTErrata -When President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901 Teddy Roosevelt took a rushed oath of office without a Bible present. There’s also no concrete evidence that presidents John Adams through John Tyler used a Bible at all for the oath. For more on oaths, bibles and presidents see Noreen Malone’s piece at Slate.
Here is Chief Justice John Roberts and Barack Obama in Round 2 of the swearing in ceremony. Both had minor stumbles during Round 1 at the inauguration so a re-do was called for in the White House Map Room.
In my recent post on the The Bibles of the Inauguration I asked the question:
“Now that we finally broke the race barrier how much longer until we break the religion barrier and have an inauguration without someone’s hand on a bible.”
Well, amazingly, it took all of one day or 31 hours to be exact for it to happen. Barack Obama has become the first president to take the Constitutional oath of office without using a Bible!
Now we can sit back and watch the conspiracy theorists and the religious right go to work. Middle name Hussein, no Bible….
CBS News Video – Katie Couric reports – “Obama Sworn in Again“