Mt. Rushmore is a symbol of a bygone America

The first time I ever went to Mt. Rushmore, which was three days ago at the time of this… The first time I ever went to Mt. Rushmore, which was three days ago at the time of this writing, I went with a Swede named Magnus. I had met Magnus only twelve hours prior at the apartment of a rock-climbing youth minister with whom we were both couch-surfing. Incidentally, Magnus slept on the couch and I slept in a sleeping bag on the floor beneath the dining room table.

Magnus was passing through on the same general mission that I myself was undertaking — an epic cross-country American extravaganza. And while I was carting myself around in a borrowed Acura Integra, Magnus was slumming it coast-to-coast using hitchhiking and the Greyhound bus system.

So the Swede and I set out for one of the United States’ greatest man-made wonders. The Black Hills, the home of Mt. Rushmore, were of exquisite beauty, especially since I’d been driving across prairie and plains and boring, boring Midwest for almost a week. I had been dying to see some mountains or, for that matter, some landscape of any texture other than prairie dog holes.

And Magnus was a pretty good conversationalist. He had been to a lot of places in the United States that I hadn’t been to yet and even more places around the world. He talked about Sweden, of course, but also of southeast Asia, Morocco and Milwaukee — all places alien to me. But for all his worldly knowledge, Magnus didn’t really have any idea who the four guys on Mt. Rushmore really were.

OK, sure, he knew that they were presidents, and he recognized Abraham Lincoln, but he didn’t really know why those four had been chosen to have their likenesses carved so impressively into the side of a mountain in a place that was as obscure as South Dakota.

And as it turned out, neither did I.

Of course I knew that George Washington was the first president, and Thomas Jefferson ratified the Constitution or something like that, and Lincoln freed the slaves, and Theodore Roosevelt had the Teddy Bear named after him, but were those really such superb contributions that they deserved to be immortalized?

And what about John Adams? I mean, why skip him? He was important enough to be played by Mr. Feeny in ‘1776,’ so he must have done something pretty awesome.

This is the part where you and I mutually realize that my getting out of pre-industrial revolution U.S. history class in high school did more harm than good. My knowledge of the country’s history is pretty patchy.

But Magnus’ questions, which remained embarrassingly unanswered by me, raised some questions of my own. Well, just one actually: If we as a country were to build another monument to our ‘great’ presidents, post-Teddy Roosevelt, whom would it feature?

As I pondered this question, another arose in my mind: If we had to elect a president based on his or her potential for ‘Mt. Rushmore-ness,’ what kind of qualities would that person have?

A very knowledgeable friend of mine, who also happens to be a historian-in-training, once said that she did not believe there would ever be another ‘great’ president. I honestly don’t remember why she thought that, but I can guess. It’s probably because the four men featured on Mt. Rushmore were beyond presidential. They were revolutionaries.

Washington was indisputably rebellious, you know, with the Revolutionary War and everything. Jefferson focused on exploring the frontier of the United States, and Roosevelt on protecting it. Lincoln wanted to make sure that people were treated as humans, even though it made him wildly unpopular.

These men were champions of intellect, freedom, liberty and justice. Not to mention that they were all champions of bad-assery. And their greatness came always at times of equally great change in the country, of revolution and exploration.

And the United States probably won’t see a time like that again. Why? Besides the fact that the frontier has been explored and protected to the point that if it were to be explored anymore, the exploration would go against the protection. And even more importantly, the time of great revolt in this country seems to be over. I feel like we’ve gotten kind of soft when it comes to feeling the need for a revolution.

So our new Mt. Rushmore would have to attract the new politician, the everyperson who doesn’t upset too much but can pander to where the generally upsetting things are. Certainly they’re more diplomatic, and perhaps that’s the key to being a successful politician in this age. But will history show that it’s the new ‘greatness,’ or that that kind of monumental epic leadership, that greatness, is left only to cereal-box tigers?

I wouldn’t know. I always seem to get out of U.S. history classes.

E-mail Cassidy at cassidygruber@gmail.com.