| Monuments to the Gipper
Group Promotes Reagan's Legacy, Across the Land
By David Ruppe
March 30, 2001— Move aside Hamilton. Scoot over Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt and Jefferson. Make way for the Gipper.
An influential and very aggressive conservative group wants former President Ronald Reagan quickly added to the pantheon of America's most revered leaders.
The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, the same folks who helped bring you Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in 1998 and a current bill to build a Reagan monument on the Washington Mall, now want those rosy cheeks on the face of the ten dollar bill.
The project was founded in 1997 by its current chairman, activist Grover Norquist, and packs in its holsters an impressive list of powerful Republicans on its advisory board, including House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Attorney General John Ashcroft and senior advisor to President Bush, Karl Rove.
"We think that what he did was so good that we want to move to name as many things and change as many things and put him on as many things as possible," says Chad Cowan, a project spokesman.
'More Powerful' Than Kennedy
The legacy project has amassed a pretty impressive record. Less than a year after it proposed renaming Virginia's Washington National Airport after the 40th president, Congress and the president made it so.
It has promoted the creation of at least one significant landmark or institution in all 50 states, 3067 U.S. counties, and yes, in former communist countries, to be named after the nemesis of the "Evil Empire," as Reagan once famously referred to the Soviet Union. And, so far, there have been 45 dedications, 42 in the United States and three of them abroad.
Among those are the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, Kwajalein Atoll, which is a test site for the successor of the expensive "Star Wars" program advocated by Reagan, Ronald Reagan Boulevard in Warwick, NY, and the Ronald Reagan nuclear aircraft carrier, dedicated earlier this month.
The project advocated South Carolina's decision to hang The Great Communicator's portrait in the State House chamber and a plan in South Dakota's legislature to name the highway approaching Mt. Rushmore after the Gipper, as Reagan became known from a role in his 1940 film Knute Rockne — All American. And maybe someday, if the project has its way, school kids will ride down that road to look up and see Reagan's sunny face in granite.
The project offers a sample letter available on it's Web site for supporters to use to lobby elected officials "to encourage them to dedicate more things after Reagan."
"His legacy is more powerful than John F. Kennedy's who has been honored with more than 600 dedications in America," says the letter.
Helped End the 'Evil Empire'
Project director Norquist testified before Congress last month in favor of legislation to establish a committee to choose a location on the National Mall for a Reagan memorial.
"In addition to major domestic accomplishments Reagan authorized several National Security Decision Directives (NSDD) that helped end a truly evil empire," he said.
While Reagan is just 13 years out of office and still alive, it took Congress more than a century to grant a memorial to Thomas Jefferson; 45 years after Abe Lincoln was assassinated, and 14 years after FDR's death. George Washington was the only president who had a federal memorial approved during his lifetime, though ground was not broken on it for about 50 years.
But the effort comes at a good time for Reagan. A Gallup poll of Americans in February ranked the 90 year-old Reagan, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, the greatest president of all time, though Gallup noted publicity frequently skewed the results of such polls.
A recent survey of scholars ranked Reagan 8th, in the "near-great" category, but not quite on par with Washington, Lincoln or other top rated presidents. He was ranked 25th in a 1996 scholar survey, perhaps showing how a president's rating can change with the times.
Great Impact
Picking up where the late Sen. Paul Coverdell of Georgia left off, the project is lobbying Congress to have Reagan's face placed on the 10-spot. The project chose the 10-dollar bill because of its common use in the currency, and the fact that Congress wouldn't have to bump off another president to put Reagan on.
"Granted Hamilton was a founding father and he helped to write the Constitution, certainly not insignificant, but we think the impact that Reagan had, particularly in the late part of the 20th Century, is great," says Cowan.
But not everyone is particularly enamored with the plan.
"Alexander Hamilton is the only U.S. Treasurer to be so honored," says Lawrence Hamilton, president of a genealogical society devoted to the Hamilton surname, who is not related to the forefather. "We have already done enough, if not more so, for Ronald Reagan. There is absolutely nothing wrong with maintaining the status quo." | |
