January 20, 2013

Taking the Oath With Little Fanfare, a Day Early

By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON — President Obama will be quietly sworn into office for a second term just before noon on Sunday in a brief White House ceremony, a day before Monday’s far showier public inaugural events, adhering to a long tradition of doing so out of the public eye when Jan. 20 falls on a Sunday.

The oath is to be administered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. in the Blue Room, an elegant, gilded space with a sweeping view of the South Lawn. The bare-bones ceremony, typically lasting no more than three minutes, will satisfy the constitutional requirement that the president’s swearing-in take place by noon on the Jan. 20 after an election.

In sharp contrast to the ceremonies planned for Monday, with their patriotic music, pealing of bells and parade of thousands of human and equine participants, Sunday’s should be decidedly understated.

A White House statement said the only witnesses to the Blue Room ceremony would be family members of the president, including his wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Sasha and Malia. It was not clear, in advance, whether other family members might also attend.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was sworn at 8:21 a.m. at his residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory, using the same 19th-century family Bible he has used in every swearing-in ceremony since he entered the Senate in 1973. The oath was delivered by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

All of this is taking place out of view of the hundreds of thousands of Americans, foreign visitors and dignitaries who have poured into Washington to be a part of the second inauguration of the nation’s first African-American president, a more restrained affair than four years ago but still a resonant marker in the nation’s history.

Sunday’s two swearings-in mark not only the official start of the second Obama-Biden term but also a certain demarcation between the challenges of the first term — winding down two wars, dealing with an economic recession, passage of landmark health reform legislation amid fierce partisan wrangling — and the typically more modest agenda of a second-term president.

Mr. Obama’s hair has visibly grayed over the past four years, but he has certain advantages as he looks ahead. Polls show he has the cautious support of at least a bare majority of Americans, though recent surveys also confirm the persistently sharp partisan divide surrounding the president.

A stock market that lost hundreds of points on the eve of his first term has vigorously rallied, despite an otherwise tepid recovery. The debt crisis in Europe appears to have subsided for now, but other enormous foreign-policy challenges loom — in North Korea, Iran, across the Middle East and most recently in North Africa.

Still, across Washington, the mood was festive on Sunday as final preparations for the events of Monday, from morning prayers to glamorous balls, parties and candlelight celebrations in the evening, were completed.

Flags have sprouted on official Washington facades, bunting adorns banks and luxury hotels, tall metal barriers and cumbersome concrete barriers are in place to block or divert traffic, and the gleaming white presidential reviewing stand, with its bullet-proof windows and steeply sloped roof, awaits the arrival of the official parade on Monday.

On Sunday, when Mr. Obama repeats the oath, swearing to faithfully execute the office of president and “to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” he will place his hand on a Bible that Mrs. Obama’s father, Fraser Robinson III, gave to his own mother, LaVaughn Delores Robinson, in 1958.

The Blue Room, with its royal blue and gold carpet and French Empire-style ornamentation, has long been used for White House receptions. President Grover Cleveland married his much younger bride, Frances Folsom, there on June 2, 1886, as John Philip Sousa led the Marine Band in a rendition of the Wedding March from a nearby hall. James Monroe sipped tea there with Great Plains Indian leaders. The main White House Christmas tree graces the room each year.

In recent weeks, White House officials, apparently hoping to keep the public focus on Monday’s ceremonies, had hinted that reporters would be excluded from the swearing-in on Sunday.

There is precedent for that approach: When Inauguration Day fell on a Sunday in 1877, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite administered the oath to Rutherford B. Hayes in the Red Room with no one else present; the private swearing-in had come as a complete surprise to the public, with a news report at the time saying it had remained a “profound secret.”

This year, the White House ultimately decided to allow a small pool of reporters and a network television camera crew to record the event.

But there was not likely to be much to record; the president was saving his speech for Monday, when he is expected to deliver an Inaugural Address of about 20 minutes from the western steps of the Capitol.

The four swearings-in for Mr. Obama, including Monday’s, might seem to place him in rare historic company — along with the only four-term president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. But many presidents have been privately sworn in on the morning of Inauguration Day, to ensure a smooth transition.

Sunday’s event will be the fourth time a president has been sworn in privately a day before the public event because a Jan. 20 fell on a Sunday, according to the White House Historical Association.

This happened with Ronald Reagan in 1985 (which was just as well: frigid temperatures forced cancellation of the next day’s inaugural parade, and the swearing-in was moved to the Capitol Rotunda), Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957 (the president and Vice President Richard M. Nixon were sworn in back to back in the East Room; Nixon’s young daughter Julie sported a black eye from a sledding accident) and Woodrow Wilson in 1917.

Edith Bolling Wilson, a first lady not always treated gently in the press, later wrote that she and her husband found the simple ceremony “more to our taste than the formal Inauguration, which followed on Monday.”

Three other times the normal Inauguration Day fell on a Sunday, but they were before 1933, when the ratification of the 20th Amendment changed the mandated inaugural date to Jan. 20 from March 4.

The first time Inauguration Day fell on a Sunday, in 1821, James Monroe consulted with Chief Justice John Marshall and decided to simply postpone the ceremony a day. Twenty-eight years later, Zachary Taylor did the same.

But in 1877, Hayes, after consultation with Chief Justice Waite and others, decided to take the oath privately a day early. They had concluded, as an Associated Press report said at the time, that “such a course was advisable, though it was not anticipated that any exigency would arise under which, in case there was an interregnum in the Executive Office, the peace of the country would be imperiled.”

It was in keeping with that tradition of ensuring a smooth transition that the events of Sunday were unfurling.