what does "desk spike"mean?
Johnson then confided that he was worried about the oath and uncertain where to take it. Bundy explained that he had his hands full at the moment; he was monitoring the eastward progress of the returning Cabinet plane. Furthermore, he did not lightly deliver horseback opinions, especially when the terrain was strange and, in this instance, extremely forbidding. Macs undergraduate major at Yale had been mathematics. He wanted life to be that exact. Presidential oaths clearly belonged on someone else's desk spike.

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To add to Der Terminator's picture, your last sentence is figurative. "On someone else's desk spike" clearly means "someone else's duty" or "for someone else to deal with".  Like an invoice stuck on someone's desk spike.

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http://www.brassgallery.com/images/D/mb-ds76-xl-01.jpg

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