#168 Preserve, Protect & Defend

#168 Preserve, Protect & Defend
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The Presidential Oath of Office

Every pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States has recit­ed the oath of office as the offi­cial start of their pres­i­den­cy. The oath is found in Arti­cle II of the Con­sti­tu­tion. It con­tains 35 words and goes as fol­lows: “I do solemn­ly swear (or affirm) that I will faith­ful­ly exe­cute the Office of Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, and will to the best of my abil­i­ty, pre­serve, pro­tect and defend the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States.“ George Wash­ing­ton report­ed­ly added the words “so help me God” to the oath, and it has been said at the end by every pres­i­dent except Theodore Roo­sevelt. All but two pres­i­dents placed their hand on a Bible while say­ing the oath, accord­ing to the Joint Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee on Inau­gur­al Cer­e­monies. John Quin­cy Adams took the oath upon a book of the law. Theodore Roo­sevelt did not use a Bible for his first inau­gu­ra­tion. In 2013, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma took the oath using two Bibles, one owned by Abra­ham Lin­coln and the oth­er by Mar­tin Luther King Jr. The vice president-​elect takes a slight­ly dif­fer­ent, longer oath, which is also uti­lized for mem­bers of Con­gress and some oth­er fed­er­al employ­ees: “I do solemn­ly swear (or affirm) that I will sup­port and defend the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States against all ene­mies, for­eign and domes­tic; that I will bear true faith and alle­giance to the same; that I take this oblig­a­tion freely, with­out any men­tal reser­va­tion or pur­pose of eva­sion; and that I will well and faith­ful­ly dis­charge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

Con­cept & Design A friend of mine says I swear a lot, so I decid­ed to just leave the word “swear” in the oath and elim­i­nate the option­al “affirm.” Who knows, I just may become pres­i­dent some day, so I will have my oath already edit­ed. My plat­form will, of course, be nude beach­es across the land (well, along the coasts, any­way). And go back to 50 cent admis­sion to Dis­ney­land with A, B, C, D and those cov­et­ed E tick­ets. The col­ors in this piece are offi­cial col­ors of the Amer­i­can flag: “Old Glo­ry Red” and a some­what dark­er ver­sion of “Old Glo­ry Blue,” both of which are sim­i­lar to the orig­i­nal dyed wool flag. And of course, the word “and” has been replaced with our friend, the ampersand.

May the coming years bring hope, health, healing and happiness to the United States of America.

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Chaz DeS­i­mone is the cre­ator of Amper­Art and own­er of Des­i­mone Design. He was adding ser­ifs to let­ters when he was just a lit­tle brat scrib­bling on walls. Now he’s a big brat and his entire career is design, so long as each project requires the most sophis­ti­cat­ed, log­i­cal, cap­ti­vat­ing results. Con­tact him at chaz@​desimonedesign.​com.

Thank you for sub­scrib­ing to Chaz’s per­son­al design project, Amper­Art. Men­tion you read all the way to the bot­tom here and receive a tru­ly incred­i­ble graph­ic design gift when you con­tact Chaz.