The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project was established in 1997 by anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist who famously once said that his goal was to shrink the federal government down to a such a small size that it could be drowned in a bathtub. At first, their goal was to rename National Airport after the former president. Once that effort was successful, they moved on to trying to dedicate monuments and landmarks to Ronald Reagan in every county in the country, as well as getting as many as governors as possible to recognize his birthday.
The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project is committed to preserving the legacy of one of America’s greatest presidents throughout the nation and abroad.
One of the ways we work to further the legacy of Reagan is by asking the governor of every state in the nation to make a proclamation declaring February 6th, “Ronald Reagan Day.” An average of 30 governors a year over the last few years have made such a proclamation, choosing to honor character over partisanship.
In addition to ensuring that every February 6th is known as “Ronald Reagan Day,” we work to encourage the naming of landmarks, buildings, roads, etc. after Ronald Wilson Reagan. We continue compiling a list of Reagan dedications that remind American society of the life and legacy of President Reagan. Each one of these dedications serve as a teaching moment for those who were not yet alive during his presidency or to grant those who remember him with the opportunity to reflect on his accomplishments. Whether it be the Ronald Reagan Parkway in Indianapolis, IN or Ronald Reagan National Airport in Arlington, VA; each and every dedication will serve as a teaching moment for generations to come. Our goal is to eventually see a statue, park, or road named after Reagan in all 3,140 counties in the United States. The first project that RRLP worked to name after Ronald Reagan was National Airport, in 1998 renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport.
Reagan’s leadership left a resounding impact on the lives of citizens hear at home and individuals worldwide. His policies led us out of double-digit inflation, twenty percent plus interest rates, and double-digit unemployment. Abroad, his disdain for communism moved him to set in place policies that would see the Soviet Union fall.
The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project asks than you join us in preserving the legacy of Ronald Wilson Reagan.
It has been a remarkably effective way of building Reagan’s legacy up in the minds of the media and the people. Among Republicans, the Gipper has been virtually sainted, and his posthumous reputation now far outstrips the way he was viewed at the time of his death, and is certainly far better than is was before Norquist launched this project, when he was sometimes ranked below Jimmy Carter.
It’s really this remarkable transformation of Reagan’s reputation and the concomitant rise in influence of the Conservative Movement over the Republican Party that makes a similar effort on the behalf of Barack Obama something worth considering. Already, there have been some successful projects to name things after our current president.
…Florida’s Riviera Beach renamed Old Dixie Highway for Obama, and it wasn’t even the first town in Palm Beach County to honor him. Nearby Pahokee had already converted East First Street to Barack Obama Boulevard.
In Hawai’i, a number of efforts have been launched, but so far all of them have failed. The president’s favorite beach is unfortunately famous for breaking people’s necks (16 severe spinal injuries between 2009 and 2013 alone) so local officials are reluctant to do anything that might attract novice body surfers to that location. Local laws in the Aloha State also prohibit naming things after politicians while they are still living unless they have 50 years of public service under their belt.
“Because he’s still president, it felt a little goofy and opportunistic for people to run around trying to honor him as if his public service was already complete,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).
Another obstacle in that native Hawaiians have a reverence for their land that is different in kind from most mainlanders:
Locals, protective of their Polynesian culture, in some cases have balked at abandoning traditional Hawaiian names for places. “People here believe that land has spirit and feeling,” said Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell. “It’s not just dirt.”
I’m sure that Hawai’i will get around to honoring their most famous native son, and most other localities will probably face fewer indigenous obstacles.
What interests me is the prospect that liberals and progressives will prove resistant to the myth-making effort, seeing it as fundamentally ahistorical and somehow dishonest. After all, the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project says that governors “honor character over partisanship” when they declare February 6th as “Ronald Reagan Day,” but that would be considerably more convincing if the project were not led and founded by naked ideologue Grover Norquist.
The Democrats’ greatest hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was sainted in the minds of most Americans without the benefit of some concerted effort to burnish his reputation through monuments and landmarks. Unlike his fifth cousin, Theodore, Franklin Roosevelt isn’t carved into Mt. Rushmore or anything comparable. It could be argued that one result is that his influence has waned over time.
Partly, this was FDR’s own fault. He didn’t want to be honored, and if he had to be memorialized he wanted it to be limited and modest.
“If any memorial is erected to me, I know exactly what I should like it to be,” Roosevelt told Justice Felix Frankfurter. Putting his hand on his desk, Roosevelt said, “I should like it to consist of a block about the size of this, and placed in the center of that green plot in front of the Archives Building.
“I don’t care what it is made of, whether limestone or granite or whatever, but I want it plain without any ornamentation, with the simple carving `In Memory of –.’ That is all.”
It wasn’t until nearly 50 years after his death that construction began on a memorial, and while it is more substantial than what Roosevelt wanted, it remains a lightly visited and unobtrusive presence on the National Mall today. Considering the length of his presidency, his domestic and wartime accomplishments, and his lasting influence, he probably deserves a memorial more on the scale of Lincoln’s, but he and the Democrats were willing to let “sleeping dogs lie” and have FDR’s record speak largely for itself.
There’s a certain classiness to that, especially when contrasted to the obviously partisan and ideological effort to honor Ronald Reagan’s two terms in office. But it also seems like a lost opportunity. Looking forward, I wonder if the Democrats will take Barack Obama’s legacy for granted–let it speak for itself–or if they’ll look at what Norquist has done and think that they need to do something similar.
You have to go back to FDR to find another Democratic president who served two full terms without getting impeached along the way. It doesn’t look like President Obama will be burdened by a Korean or Vietnam war, nor by a Watergate or Iran-Contra or l’affaire Lewinsky. If the two-term curse doesn’t hit him soon, he’ll be in the best position of any president since Roosevelt to deserve the honor of monuments and landmarks. This fact alone argues in favor of honoring him.
Will the Democrats find reasons not to do it? Will we wait fifty years to see construction begin on Obama’s memorial on the Washington Mall?
