THE FOURTH MAN

The Mount Rushmore National Monument often is referred to as the "Shrine of Democracy." Four historic faces are carved by Gutzon Borglum in a granite Black Hills mountain.

Three of the "heads" were obvious choices, as they represent defining moments--game changers, if you will--in the history of the United States. Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence; George Washington and the Revolutionary War; and Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War to save the Union.

For the fourth man, Borglum selected Theodore Roosevelt, a not so obvious choice it would appear. Although Roosevelt had been a president, and even had a stuffed toy bear named after him, it did not seem that he represented a defining moment in history or even a game changer. Yes, he was a naturalist, a Rough Rider, and a rancher in the North Dakota badlands. In 1901, he became vice president under president McKinley. When Mckinley was assinated later that year, Roosevelt became president and was elected for another term in 1904. As president, he became known as a conservationist, setting aside some 280 million acres for national parks, monuments and forests, and as a "trust buster" for aggressive enforcement of antitrust laws.

However, Borglum may have picked Roosevelt for Mount Rushmore for a less visible but more important reason. Roosevelt was the first "modern" president, the first to exercise his executive powers to impose broad regulatory authority. In other words, his defining moment was his expansion of presidential power, particularly in relation to Congress.

For example, he wrote to historian George Trevelyan "I have a definite philosophy about the presidency. I think it should be a very powerful office, and I think the President should be a very strong man who uses without hesitation every power that the position yields."

In his autobiography, Roosevelt wrote: "The most important factor in getting the right spirit in my administration...was my insistence upon the theory that the executive power was limited only by specific restrictions and prohibitions appearing in the Constitution or imposed by Congress under its constitutional powers...Under this interpretation of executive power I did and caused to be done many things not previously done by the President and the heads of the departments. I did not usurp power but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power."

So, Roosevelt may have become the inspiration and model for the future aggressive broadening of executive power of the president, particularly through the use of administrative agencies, beginning with relative F.D.Roosevelt and continuing to this day. Indeed, regulatory agencies controlled by the executive are limited only when courts find that they have exceeded their statuary authority or have acted unreasonably.

Therefore, the fourth man on Mount Rushmore may have influenced and changed the United States as much as the other three men, but in more subtle ways.