Vice President Biden made his first -- and probably not last -- apology for a joke gone bad, reportedly calling Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to offer a mea culpa for cracking wise about Roberts' flubbing the oath of office during President Obama's inauguration.A press aide revealed to a cable news network that Biden made a call to the chief justice, the Christian Science Monitor reported.
Biden Press Secretary Elizabeth Alexander would not confirm the details of the call. "It was a private conversation. I do not know the content of it and cannot characterize it," she told FOX News.
But Jay Carney, communications director for the vice president, told FOX News that Biden's office" strongly denies that any Biden aide confirmed that there was an apology" from Biden to Roberts. The vice president's office has sought a retraction from CNN, which first reported the Biden apology.
On Inauguration Day, when he administered the oath, which appears in the Constitution, to Obama, Roberts stumbled over the second portion: "... that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States." The chief justice put "faithfully" at the end of the sentence, and Obama, who apparently had memorized the oath, looked at Roberts, who then realized his mistake and repeated that portion of the oath correctly.
Obama then repeated the oath in the incorrect order.
Obama and Roberts got it right a day later, when Roberts made a quick visit to the White House and the two repeated the exercise out of "an abundance of caution."
That caution followed Biden's crack about Roberts' memory.
Biden was to swear in senior executive staff at a White House ceremony after having already given the oath to newly confirmed Cabinet secretaries. When Obama reminded him that he had only done the one group and hadn't done the second yet, Biden quipped, "My memory is not as good as Chief Justice Roberts'."