In the Beginning
The Oath Is a President's First Act, But Everyone's Not on the Same Page

By Dan Zak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 18, 2009

Thirty seconds to change the country. Thirty seconds to keep it the same. Just give your lovely wife that Bible, put your hand on it and repeat after me.

I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear . . .

The oath of office: Heavy with tradition, 39 words plus your name, recited then repeated.

. . . that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States . . .

These seconds are the pinpoint of circumstance in a hurricane of pomp. It says more about the country than the teeming parade, the mess of bunting, the whump of the 21-gun salute, the just-so dais. The only thing that matters is this half-minute, these 39 words, every four years. So simple, so direct and over so quickly. Let's slow it down to half-speed. Let's see what it reveals.

. . . and will to the best of my ability . . .

It's a pledge. It's a paradox.

. . . preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States . . .

It's how we've changed. It's how we haven't.

. . . so help me God.

* * *

If you surrender to the grandeur, you'll miss the tension.

The skirmish over religion in the public square, the uncertain journey of women in politics, the pull toward tradition and the push toward change -- it's messy and it's still unfolding. It's America, paraded onstage for millions to see. Break down the scenery, piece by piece, starting with the one and only prop: the Bible.

It's held by the first lady, sworn on by the president, presided over by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. All eyes are on the cold, empty air between them, and in the center sits the Bible. Yet George Washington, the deified father of the country, most likely did not cap the oath of office by proudly proclaiming "so help me God" (a phrase that's not part of the oath as written in the Constitution).

We know you've seen "John Adams" on HBO, but let's revisit the actual scene: The infant nation held its first presidential inauguration in noisy, polluted downtown Manhattan in April 1789. Someone forgot the Bible, used for oath-taking since the 4th century, so nearby St. John's Lodge delivered the Masons' calf-bound, silver-clasped King James version. Washington placed his hand on it. And a president of precedents set in motion the minutiae of the oath.

Bible? Yes.

Wife? No. Martha hadn't arrived from Virginia yet.

"So help me God"? Probably not, according to Charlene Bickford, director of George Washington University's First Federal Congress Project, which has scoured all original accounts from that era and found no report of the phrase.

"Washington's support for the Constitution was the single most important unifying force in the U.S. at that time, and he is going to be very exacting in how he takes the constitutional oath -- and it's not there," Bickford says of the phrase.

Historians have long attributed the phrase to Washington, burnishing tradition without proper evidence, but its earliest recorded utterance came from Chester Arthur in 1881. Now it's all but Sharpie'd into the Constitution, recited by every chief justice and repeated by every president:

Harry Truman said it with dramatic half-beats between words in 1949.

Lyndon Johnson uttered it softly, almost trembling, on Air Force One in 1963.

Ronald Reagan punctuated it with a movie-star tilt of the head in 1981.

George W. Bush subtly pumped his raised hand to accent each word in 2001.

The oath would be lame without it. To end with "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution"? How mundane. "So help me God" is a climax, an exclamation point, a rimshot cue for "Hail to the Chief." It's also an acknowledgment of a power greater than a president, and that's where things get tricky.

* * *

Earlier this month, process server Dan Portnoy walked up to John Roberts's home in Maryland and, through the front window, locked eyes with the chief justice. Roberts came to the door and graciously accepted a lawsuit filed against him.

Credit Michael Newdow, California physician and lawyer, for slinging a fiery complaint to the private doorstep of the supreme judiciary. Newdow wants "so help me God" (and prayer) removed from the inauguration. He and others argue that the chief justice alters the Constitution, acknowledges the existence of God and places the government's "imprimatur" on specific religious beliefs.

So, as this thinking goes, Roberts should not say "so help me God." If he does, Obama should object. "Preserve, protect and defend," remember? It'd be a great moment of constitutional farce.

Perhaps there'd be a duel.

This will not happen. Although similar lawsuits are regularly filed in all levels of government, there is overwhelming public support for God in American rituals: 86 percent of Americans believe in God and 90 percent want God to remain on U.S. currency and in the Pledge of Allegiance. Newdow has a smaller army. His co-plaintiffs include 30 other individuals who want to attend the inauguration without feeling marginalized. Also named are 11 atheist or humanist associations and "unnamed children" who will be influenced by "coercive imposition of religious dogma."

Texas, of course, has something to say about this.

Three days after Roberts was served, the attorney general of Texas recruited his counterparts in the other 49 states to co-sponsor a friend-of-the-court brief that reminds everyone that God has always been a part of government, since the Founding Fathers. Never mind that the brief eagerly cites George Washington's "so help me God."

Point is: The Supreme Court has upheld the invocation of religion in government, calling it -- if we lump together two separate 1984 decisions -- "a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country" that has "lost through rote repetition any significant religious content."

Does repeating a prayer eventually sap it of meaning? Is "so help me God" nothing more than benign ceremonial deism? If so, then what's the harm, either way?

"Could we have 'So help me white people'? What message would that send to blacks?" Newdow says. "Our Constitution treats religion just as it treats race: as a fundamental right that the government stays out of."

But leaving out the phrase "would be an invalidation of more than 200 years of history and tradition," says Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. "When people are forced to turn away from their previously acknowledged heritage, there begins the unraveling of the society."

Obviously the phrase is not just words. It is 11 letters strung over a chasm between honoring heritage and honoring the letter of the law.

On Thursday, on Constitution Avenue, Newdow's motion for a preliminary injunction against Roberts and others was denied by a D.C. District Court judge. It was just another move in the chess match, as two sides push their pieces, one lawsuit at a time, one defense at a time, in a tense dance around the board.

* * *

In all this heaving of ideologies, it's good to remember the silent center, the woman in the middle. Completing the 30-second triangle: The first lady, who holds the Bible and receives a peck on the cheek after "so help me God."

On Tuesday, tradition calls for Michelle Obama to hold the Bible. It will be the one from Lincoln's first inauguration in 1861. When you hold the Bible -- fuzzy with burgundy velvet, its binding rigid, its border rimmed with gold-washed white metal -- it's smaller than you'd think. Shorter than an adult male's hand. It's presidential, but nowhere near as extravagant as William McKinley's Bible, the ritziest of them all, which came with a carrying case upholstered in light blue satin.

Most presidents took office with a Bible at their side, although Teddy Roosevelt, in the clamor after McKinley's assassination, simply raised his hand, and John Quincy Adams swore on a volume of laws. Harding, Eisenhower, Carter and George H.W. Bush all used Washington's Bible. George W. Bush wanted to use it, too, but it was raining on Jan. 20, 2001, so he used a family Bible, as did many other presidents. Some presidents, like Nixon, used two at the same time. Pity the biceps of Pat.

" . . . so help me God."

Peck.

Before the 20th century, some first ladies attended the inauguration and some did not. The first first lady to stand at the center of the action and hold the Bible was Lady Bird Johnson in 1965. She did so at her loving husband's behest, wearing a brilliant red cloak in an ocean of black. A modern tradition was born.

The first lady has been at the center ever since, a colorful emblem in a sea of suits. Pat in cerise, then turquoise, holding two Bibles. Betty in dove gray, repeating the oath in her mind to steel her own commitment to the Constitution after the dark days of Watergate. Rosalynn in teal. Nancy in red, then sapphire. Barbara in royal blue. Hillary in eggplant, then carnation pink. Laura in turquoise, then white. A rainbow of women's increasing involvement in all levels of American society, says Allida Black, an expert on first ladies and director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers project at George Washington University.

"It's emblematic of the country's increasing acceptance of women in politics," Black says. "The first lady is not only supposed to be first wife, she's also supposed to be first partner -- the symbol of American womanhood and the modern American woman. That's a tension that reflects America's unresolved issues."

Mother in chief? A partner with her own executive portfolio?

Either or both, the woman will be there Tuesday, having worked her way over the past 220 years from absentee to observer to focal point. Her role in those 30 seconds? Watch Michelle's eyes move back and forth between Roberts and her husband as those words are spoken and repeated. Silent, yes, but very present at this pinpoint in time and space. She's the witness, between the president and God and the court and the people.

* * *

Half a minute to confuse and captivate the curious citizen. Slow it down, and what do we see? Centuries into seconds on the inaugural stage.

A nation founded on the concept of separation between church and state will call upon God at its most crucial public ceremony, as has been done for centuries.

A chief justice will add four words to the Constitution, and the majority will be fine with that, even though a steady stream of lawsuits are being filed to question tradition.

A black man will swear on the Bible of the president who's credited with unshackling slaves, swearing to preserve a document that he alters by the end of the oath, and this will be either a touchy exercise of his religious freedom or a theatrical nod to wise forefathers.

His wife will hold that Bible as a sign of her evolving-yet-indefinite role, smack at center stage but chronically unscripted.

These actions spring from heritage, not law, but they will be choreographed with a precision that makes them seem carved in stone. Face the stage and face the nation. It's roiling and shifting, even in that tiny, historic moment when everyone stands still.