A Flub for Change

Sam Osherson

The flubbed oath of office on President Obama’s Inaugural Day has stayed in my mind. At the time, it was the subject of intense search for blame, usually partisan, that obscures its profound meaning. Rush Limbaugh blamed it on Obama, pronouncing it proof that he is not really equipped to be President. Josh Marshall at TalkingPointMemo.com considered Justice Robert’s tangled lines yet more evidence of Republican incompetence. In the Times, Steve Pinker laid the blame on the Chief Justice’s “habit of grammatical niggling.” My wife says the ordeal of watching the two men hem-and-haw ruined the majesty of the moment.

 

Not for me. I treasure it, and hope it becomes an iconic moment in our cultural history.

What really was involved? A conservative Republican white male Chief Justice of the Supreme Court swore in the first black President. The fact that Obama voted against Robert’s confirmation is a minor point in the drama: the two men face-to-face profiled the gender and racial subtext that underlies our celebration of this transformative moment in our country.

 

In such a swearing in, the two men need to do an intimate dance. They have to follow each other through the oath of office, Roberts leading Obama. It’s unimaginable that two such intelligent and studious men didn’t study up on their assignments. They both knew what they had to say. Practicing the steps on your own, however, is a lot different from dancing together.

 

Obama appears to have flubbed the first part, making a false start before Chief Justice Roberts had completed the first phrase. The President wound up saying, “I, Barack” twice. Roberts then got completely tangled up in the next part with his floating “faithfully” and absent “execute.”

 

Psychology offers us many ways to understand how two people of different races, both very prepared and capable, might have messed up their joint assignment. Stereotype threat. Implicit cognition. Unconscioius bias. Racial identity, All these concepts are ways to understand anxieties outside conscious awareness when a black person and white person are put together in work situations where they need to cooperate. As another psychological maxim has it: “the unconscious never sleeps.” All that preparation and pomp and circumstances and just when you don’t expect it, the shadow arrives.

Were such dynamics involved in the flub? Impossible to say for sure, of course. I like to think so, though. After all, the Obama Presidency doesn’t mean that race is no longer on the table in everyday interactions. I’m aware of it today as before Nov 4th. What if I make a slip with a black friend of mine, say something offensive or ignorant or politically incorrect? What if I expose some unconscious bias or other gaffe? I welcomed the image that Obama and Roberts offered: a flub and a recovery.

 

How exactly they recovered on the podium is open to interpretation. For my money, though, Obama demonstrated his leadership through his graciousness. At one hair-raising point, both men stopped. Stuck. Who was going to take charge and repair this moment? I bet that Obama—like Roberts—had the passage memorized. Obama could have overridden Roberts and pronounced the oath of office correctly (“that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States”), despite Roberts’ errors, thus humiliating the Chief Justice. Instead, Obama nodded gently and authoritatively to Roberts, as if to say, “you go, we’ll do it your way.” Roberts began again and they finished the oath.

 

In that moment of breakdown, we saw the repair: stop, take a deep breath, acknowledge, begin again.

 

Even if it takes two tries, and a third on the next day, to get it right.