The President's New Job Description: Soldier-in-Chief

One of the interesting sidelights from the Joe Klein/FISA column scandal, about which Glenn Greenwald has written with such passion and clarity, is the way in which Klein misstated the nature of the president's Constitutional role:

And then there's Klein's claim, citing Chris Dodd, that "when the President takes the oath of office, he (or she) promises two things: to protect the Constitution and to protect the nation against enemies, foreign and domestic." Klein warns Democrats that to win in 2008, they must "find the proper balance between those two." But the oath of office which the President takes actually says nothing of the kind:

Each president recites the following oath, in accordance with Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution:

"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."

Directly contrary to what Klein said, Presidents only swear to "defend the Constitution," not to "to protect the nation against enemies, foreign and domestic."

Like many others, I'm sure, I wondered about this. The phrase "against all enemies, foreign and domestic," is in fact a familiar one. Where does it actually come from, and how did people like Chris Dodd and Joe Klein mistakenly insert it into the presidential oath of office?

Here is the answer:

The wordings of the current oath of enlistment and oath for commissioned officers are as follows:

"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; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

"I, _____ (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God." (DA Form 71, 1 August 1959, for officers.)

So neither Dodd nor Klein simply made up the phrase "enemies foreign or domestic." They borrowed it--unwittingly, I'm sure--from the oath a soldier takes upon enlisting in the Army.

Which makes the mistake two things: A careless factual error; and a small but significant additional illustration of the growing militarization of our country.

Apparently it's not bad enough that our politicians and much of the mainstream media now routinely refer to the president as "our commander in chief," as if he is some sort of military dictator whose orders we are all bound to obey. Now they actually want to (symbolically) enlist him in the uniformed services, as if his chief responsibility is to patrol the country, rifle in hand, prepared to gun down our "enemies."

Makes me wonder why we bothered asking Musharraf to retire from his army post in Pakistan. We seem to be drifting in the opposite direction here in the USA.