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Redesigning Mount Rushmore

It must have been the false teeth that did him in. According to a recent Gallup poll that asked Americans to name the greatest president of the United States, George Washington has dropped to seventh place in the hearts of his countrymen. I shouldn't be stunned by the news. Today's Americanos are tough customers; they show no mercy toward men who powder their hair and wear dentures made from hippopotamus ivory. Of course, even Washington disliked his false teeth. Those cumbersome ivories were excruciating to wear and probably forced him to pronounce his S's like F's, much the way they appeared in print back then. Imagine him trying to intone the Oath of Office, which must have been concocted by some malevolent imp who wanted to watch the first president suffer: 'I, George Wafhington, do folemnly fwear that I will faithfully execute the office of prefident of the United Ftatef, and will, to the beft of my ability, preferve, protect and defend the Conftitution of the United Ftatef.' To which Washington gallantly added, 'Fo help me God.'

Then you have to take into account what those dentures did to Washington's placid, somewhat bovine countenance: they distorted the lower portion of his face and gave him the pained look of a music tutor listening to an emphatically untalented six-year-old violinist. That's the face we see staring at us from the dollar bill -- the dyspeptic president with the hippopotamus teeth. It's as if we all remind him of that six-year-old violinist, and he finds it distasteful to be in our presence. But it could have been worse: if Gilbert Stuart had painted a portrait of George Washington actually cracking a smile with his hippopotamus teeth, his greatness ranking might have slipped to the dusky nether-regions inhabited today by the likes of Millard Fillmore and Chester A. Arthur.

Still, it hurts to think that the Father of Our Country's ratings are slipping so badly. He deserves to be ranked as one of the most esteemed public figures in the history of our entire bungling species: a hero in war, a gentleman in peace... a commanding yet benevolent leader, thoroughly noble yet touchingly human and self-effacing. He had a chance to be king but preferred to experiment with crops on his Virginia plantation. What hurts even more is that Washington's opposite number on the presidential character scale, a certain Mr. Clinton of Arkansas, actually beat him out on the all-time greatness list. You heard it right, fellow citizens: Bill Clinton ranked fourth, ahead of Washington and, for that matter, directly on top of FDR. And Clinton did it without leading us through the Great Depression, defeating the Nazis or uttering memorable lines like "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." No, our friend Billy made it to number four because he was fortunate to preside over an era of unprecedented prosperity and looked vaguely like an older, wiser, college-educated Elvis. Never mind that the stock market began its ominous tumble while he still occupied the Oval Office. Never mind that he rented the Lincoln Bedroom to the highest bidder, consorted with young women of easy virtue and generated scandals the way Stephen King used to crank out horror novels in his prime. His late presidency still produces gaseous whiffs of scandal even in his retirement.

If Clinton was fourth on the all-time list, you're probably wondering who placed in the top three. Lincoln, of course -- but I regret to inform you that Honest Abe finished a poor third. Who could possibly rank higher than the Great Emancipator in the pantheon of U.S. Presidents, you ask? Thomas Jefferson, perhaps? (Remember the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition and all that resounding rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence.) Teddy Roosevelt, possibly? (Big on conservation, trust-busting, the Panama Canal.) Woodrow Wilson, perchance? (Saved the Allied cause in World War I, campaigned tirelessly for the League of Nations.) No, I'm afraid the answer is 'none of the above.' The first and second slots were filled by those two beguiling Irishmen, Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy. Both of them had a way with words, a twinkle in the eye, a flashy smile (no hippopotamus dentures here), and an inexplicable personal magnetism commonly known as charisma, which sounds like a liver ailment but almost invariably wins votes. Both were capable and sometimes inspiring leaders -- but were they better than Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson and Jefferson? Give me a break, my fellow Americans.

I find it sobering to consider that if Mount Rushmore were being redesigned today, only one of the original four faces -- Lincoln's -- would still be chiseled into the rocks. We'd be discarding Washington, Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt in favor of Reagan, Kennedy and (I still can't believe it, can you?) CLINTON. Three men of substance and character tossed onto the sidelines of history in favor of three consummate actors, three masters of illusion. What does our taste in presidents say about the American people at the beginning of the third millennium? That we've scrapped any pretense of honoring greatness? That we value glibness and charisma over character? That we're intolerant of men who chew with dentures made from hippopotamus teeth? Yes, yes and definitely yes. But I think the problem goes even deeper: that we've lost our historical memory. We still honor Abe Lincoln because his face and words were powerful enough to survive the MTV era. But the other great presidents are, as they say, history. Into the history books, out of our consciousness. To be considered great in this country, it helps above all to be RECENT.

© 2001 by Bridget Petrella Media Relations. "Some Cynical Guy" appears here by permission of the publisher. If you'd like this column to appear regularly in  your own site or publication, write to UPBEATmag@aol.com.

Profile of a Cynic...

Bayan, who claims to be a "kinder, gentler cynic," currently lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His weekly column, "Some Cynical Guy," is published and syndicated by Upbeat Online. 

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