Eastern Michigan University
DigitalCommons@EMU
Senior Honors Theses
Honors College
2012
Waiting in Line at Mount Rushmore:
Understanding the Rankings of Presidential
Greatness
Neil Weinberg
Eastern Michigan University
Follow this and additional works at: http://commons.emich.edu/honors
Recommended Citation
Weinberg, Neil, "Waiting in Line at Mount Rushmore: Understanding the Rankings of Presidential Greatness" (2012). Senior Honors
Theses. 292.
http://commons.emich.edu/honors/292
This Open Access Senior Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College at DigitalCommons@EMU. It has been
accepted for inclusion in Senior Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@EMU. For more information, please contact [email protected].
Waiting in Line at Mount Rushmore: Understanding the Rankings of
Presidential Greatness
Abstract
Carved into a granite cliff six thousand miles above sea level in rural South Dakota is where we find ourselves.
It was here in October 1927 that a Danish-American man, Gutzon Borglum, and his son, aptly named Lincoln,
began sculpting a monument to greatness. Construction took fourteen years and four-hundred workers with a
price tag of nearly $1 million. Three million people will visit this year, which is more than three times the
state's population.1 The architect of this pantheon explains the rationale best by saying, "The purpose of the
memorial is to communicate the founding, expansion, preservation, and unification of the United States with
colossal statues of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt."2 Arthur Schlesinger would not
publish the first rankings on Presidential Greatness for another twenty one years, but in the fall of 1927,
Borglum' s team had already registered an unofficial vote in what would become a central debate in American
life: Who are the great presidents?
Degree Type
Open Access Senior Honors Thesis
Department
Political Science
First Advisor
Edward Sidlow
This open access senior honors thesis is available at DigitalCommons@EMU: http://commons.emich.edu/honors/292