What the document actually says is “that they are endowed by their Creator.” Conservatives accused Obama of omitting the Declaration’s grounding in religious faith.
A White House spokesman said that Obama had gotten the passage right on “countless occasions.”
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin sparked debate over the historic ride by Paul Revere after she told her version of the story during her "One Nation" bus tour.
Republicans have used incorrect quotes to portray the founders as sympathetic to modern conservatism. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah) offered this 2009 argument in favor of gun rights. “President George Washington said that the right to keep and bear arms is ‘the most effectual means of preserving peace,’ ” Hatch said on the Senate floor.
But Washington actually wrote something different: “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.”
A Hatch spokeswoman said Monday that he wasn’t sure how the error occurred but that Hatch “continues to believe that the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental and essential for liberty.”
In 2009, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) read a quote from Jefferson, which seemed like a warning about the welfare state.
“The democracy will cease to exist,” Coburn said, putting up a placard with the quote printed on it, “when you take away from those who are willing to work to give to those who would not.”
But the researchers at Monticello say those aren’t Jefferson’s words. Their research says this quote first surfaced in 1986, 160 years after Jefferson’s death.
Asked about the error Monday, Coburn’s staff did not say how it was made. A spokesman said that misquoting founders is far from the capital’s biggest problem.
“Of course we want to be accurate,” spokesman John Hart wrote in an e-mail. “However, we have a $14 trillion debt because politicians have misapplied the founders’ words — particularly those in the Constitution — not because they have misquoted the founders.”
But voters might just as easily ask themselves: Even if the founders didn’t say those things, would they have agreed with them?
Yes, no and maybe, historians say. Jefferson was an advocate of a smaller central government — although in an era when the government was far different than it is today.
“I think that the Postal Service was, like, six people” in Jefferson’s time, said Jill Lepore, a historian at Harvard University. “And he thought that was too many.”
Washington, on the other hand, advocated for a stronger central authority. Edward Lengel, who has edited Washington’s papers, said he was frustrated that modern politicians ignore historical facts.
“It’s a betrayal of Washington’s legacy. It’s a betrayal of who he was,” said Lengel, a University of Virginia professor. “He would have been outraged to find people manipulating his words, or making things up, to indicate that he supposedly believed this or that thing.”
But, Lengel said, misquoting the founders is a tradition that started even before the founders were dead. During Washington’s second term as president, he said, political enemies circulated fake letters in which Washington allegedly expressed admiration for an enemy, Britain’s King George III.
He said that at first, Washington said nothing. He thought people knew him well enough to know the quotes were fake.
They didn’t.
“People really believed it,” Lengel said.
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