A 60-foot version of President Barack Obama’s face will eventually be carved into Mount Rushmore, forever gazing down from the historic mountaintop beside the faces of four other US presidents. At least, this is what some college professors predict.
Immortalized as a giant granite carving towering over South
Dakota, Obama would always be remembered as the first
African-American president. Nothing he does in the White House
will take away from that fact, which has led thirty percent of
George Washington University professors to believe he will end up
on Mount Rushmore, according to a new survey conducted by The
College Fix.
“History undoubtedly will accord President Obama a
special place by virtue of being the first African-American
president,” said Prof. Paul Wahlbeck, chair of the political
science department at GW. But although Wahlbeck confidently
acknowledged his belief that Obama will soon join the faces of
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore
Roosevelt, he said he is also “reluctant to venerate political
leaders while or shortly after they served.”
Two other professors mirrored Wahlbeck’s thoughts, all stating
that it is too early to make plans regarding the addition of
Obama’s face, but that it could happen in the distant future.
“Historical judgments take time to form and Obama is still in
office,” history and public policy professor Edward Berkowitz
told The College Fix. “It could be that he will be one of the
great presidents, worthy of having his likeness carved on a
mountain, but certainly not yet.”
The GW survey size was small, consisting of only 10 respondents,
but the news has nevertheless sparked a debate on whether or not
the current president belongs among the ranks of America’s most
celebrated leaders. Six of the respondents said Obama does not
deserve a place on Mount Rushmore, which has not added a
president since the memorial was completed in 1941. But
while the professors warned that it is too early to worship a
president who is still in office, some Americans have already
begun to advocate for Mount Rushmore’s addition of Obama.
A Facebook page titled the “Campaign to Put President Obama on
Mt. Rushmore” already has more than 800 “likes”. The page depicts
an image of Mount Rushmore, with Obama’s face added via
Photoshop. The idea has also been brought up numerous times
throughout Obama’s terms in office.
In November, Huffington Post blogger Bill Lucey examined the
feasibility of adding another head to Mount Rushmore. The U.S.
National Park Service claims that there is no additional room to
add a granite carving to the site, but some organizations
continue to advocate it.
“Mount Rushmore and Mr. Obama are invoked so frequently in the
same sentence that I began to wonder if in fact there is a
movement in place to chisel the 44th president on the South
Dakota mountainside,” Lucey writes.
But even if a 60-foot version of Obama’s head doesn’t end up in
South Dakota, he has already been memorialized on parts of the
American landscape. In Pennsylvania, an international magnet
school was named “The Barack Obama Academy for International
Studies” just two years after he took office. A Florida
street was named “Barack Obama Avenue” in Feb. 2009 and an
Orlando parkway was named “Barack Obama Parkway”. Across
the US, several other schools have been named after the
president, including elementary and high schools in New Jersey,
New York, Wisconsin, and California. Even though Obama is
unlikely to find himself on Mount Rushmore anytime soon, his name
has already arisen on street signs, parkways and schools, despite
the fact that his presidential legacy may have not yet been
formed.
This article originally appeared on: RT