From a hastily typed White House pool report:
At 735 pm, [Chief Justice John} Roberts administ[e]red the oath of office again to obama in the map
room. Robert gibbs said the wh counsel, greg craig, believes the oath was
fine Tuesday, but one word was out of sequence so they did this out of a
“an abundance of caution.”
“We decided it was so much fun…” Obama joked while sitting on a couch.
Obama stood and walked over to make small talk with pool as roberts donned
his black robe.
“Are you ready to take the oath?” Roberts asked.
“I am, and we’re going to do it very slowly,” obama replied.
Oath took 25 seconds.
After a flawless recitation, roberts smiled and said, “congratulations,
again.”
Obama said, “thank you, sir.”
Smattering of applause.
“All right.” Obama said. “The bad news for the pool is there’s 12 more
balls.”
So why did they do this? I don’t think anyone could possibly made a serious legal argument that the way the oath was administered yesterday made any difference. But I think my colleague Jim Poniewozik may have put his finger on the potential for nutjobbery in our liveblog yesterday, when he jokingly wrote:
James Poniewozik – 12:13 p.m.: @KT: I am registering http://www.obamaflubbedtheoathandthereforeisnotofficiallypresident.com
And, yes, commenters, I do know that most of the flubbing was done by Roberts.