POTUS QUOTUS - "Acting President"

POTUS QUOTUS - BHO44 SECOND INAUGURAL 2013 - "That Means All of Us"

The Private Inauguration Part 2 - The Obamas

The private swearing-in of the new administration continued hours after Vice President was sworn in by Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor at the Vice President's Residence. When compared to the last Sunday private swearing-in, President Ronald Reagan had his with a small audience in the foyer of the White House right after Vice President George Bush. President Barack Obama's was simpler than that. The president and the first family walked in to the Blue Room with the Chief Justice and the only audience seemed to be the film crew. Chief Justice John Roberts read the oath from a piece of paper, swearing-in Obama a third time since January 20, 2009. He and the president stumbled through the oath the first time around and non-believers in the president believed since he said it wrong he wasn't really the president so later that day the two redid the oath. A note on that presidents, chief justices and their vice presidential counter-parts have messed up the oath of office plenty of times. Even the man who took the oath as a president-elect and later administered the oath as chief justice, William Howard Taft substituted a word in the oath when swearing-in Herbert Hoover. Taft's response, "Before radio ... we messed it up even more than that."

The Private Inauguration Part 1 - The Bidens

The private swearing-in of the president and vice president happened a little differently than in the past. When President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush were sworn in on a Sunday, their little ceremony was held in the White House foyer. Invited guests sat in chairs facing the staircase and watched as the vice president went first and then the president.

This year the vice president took the oath of office almost four hours before the president. Vice President Joe Biden was sworn in my Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor (who apparently went from the ceremony up to New York, but will be back in Washington by noon tomorrow for the public swearing-in) in a ceremony that looked more like the Reagan/Biden private swearing in but at the Naval Observatory, aka the Vice President's Residence.

My 118th Post

118 was my classroom for 3 of my 4 years of teaching social studies at Castro Valley High School. When I got the room my second year of teaching (aka my sophomore year of high school 2), it had just been renovated and got a new classroom marker shown above.

Pointless Presidential Pfacts #30 - "There's an Inauguration For That"

Times they are a changing. When a new technology surfaces it of course becomes a part of the national story and an inauguration is always a new chapter on the American story. When Barack Obama is sworn in for a second term, his inaugural this time around will be the first to have an app.

There were other technological advances that helped usher in a new presidential administration, or at least get the message out that there was one.

James K. Polk's inaugural on March 4, 1845 was the first to be telegraphed.

William McKinley in 1897 was the first to be filmed using a motion picture camera.

The first telephone at an inauguration was in 1905 for Theodore Roosevelt.

This just in, radio joined the event by broadcasting Calvin Coolidge's inauguration in 1925.

Inaugurations became talkies in newsreels with Herbert Hoover's swearing-in in 1929.

Don't touch the remote (which probably wasn't around), Harry Truman's 1948 inauguration was the first to be televised.

William Jefferson Clinton's inaugural ceremony was the first broadcast live on the internet on January 20, 1997.

POTUS QUOTUS - GWB43 SECOND INAUGURAL 2005 - "The Battle Cry of Freedom"