White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, at his daily briefing, was asked about President Obama invoking God in a pitch for his jobs bill at the Key Bridge in Washington, D.C. In response, Carney said, “Well, I believe the phrase in the Bible is, the Lord helps those who help themselves.”
Actually, there is no such phrase in the Bible. What Carney (and Obama) may have had in mind is a line from President Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, in which Kennedy said, “With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
I realize JFK is something of a sainted figure within Democratic circles (I happen to admire much about Kennedy as well). But his Inaugural Address, as good as it was, was not written on stone tablets. And Kennedy, whatever his strengths were, was not the incarnation of God.
We already knew Carney was a mediocre press secretary; he also turns out to be something of a biblical illiterate as well.
I don't think that literacy is the issue as much as carelessness (which is really worse because not knowing what one doesn't know is usually far more dangerous than just not knowing). One can know a lot of scripture and not know off the top of one's head whether a given phrase or variant thereof appears _somewhere_ in the Bible. I know the "Lord helps those who help themselves" is not part of the Bible not because of encyclopedic recall, but because I took two seconds to Google it. That the press secretary for the President can't be troubled to do very basic work that would keep him from making an ass of himself is far more troubling than any lack of scriptural facility.
I doubt they even knew of that speech until they read it here.
I thought it was by Benjamin Franklin, but that turns out to be wrong too, so I’ll cut Carney some slack on this. His misconception is very widely shared, and you really can’t expect him to stop in the middle of a press conference to double check the attribution of an aphorism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helps_those_who_help_themselves