Given their way, some conservatives would jump at any chance to round out South Dakota’s iconic Mt. Rushmore with their hero 40th president, Ronald Reagan.

“Reagan was the most successful president of the 20th century,” Reagan Legacy Project Chairman Grover Norquist told Devin Dwyer of ABC News earlier this year. “He took a country that was in economic collapse and military in retreat round the globe and turned it completely around.

Go to the ABC News homepage to vote on adding a bust to Mt. Rushmore.

Congress rejected the notion 12 years ago but the monument’s 70th birthday today is a reminder that the monument of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt is incomplete with or without another face: The sculptor died before finishing Washington’s waist and coat, and Lincoln’s hands, according to the Rapid City, S.D., tourism website.

Here are some other things you might not know about the memorial to U.S. history:

* The project took 14 years and cost about $1 million;

* The carvings are scaled to people who would be 465 feet tall;

* Each head is 6 stories tall;

* The carvings displaced 800 million pounds of stone;

* The noses are 20 feet long;

* The workers climbed 506 steps each day.

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who started the project at age 60, died unexpectedly seven months before the project was declared complete Oct. 31, 1941, built on his desire to “show posterity what manner of men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and the rain alone shall wear them away.”

lol,,,,that would be interesting

It is a monument to great individuals, who were great leaders of our nation. I would say that since it is a national monument (even if Clinton did sign all our National Parks away to UN control), it should be put to the voters (we the people) to decide. After all, it would be MORE of out tax dollars paying for it!

Unfortunately, anyone who is not Obama would be grounds for a riot.

I think they should blow up the ones that are there.

thats a 'democratic' idea,,

I dont even know that OBAMA Should be there. I consider it one persons vision at that time, and it should be left as they envisioned it. period.

Whether or not he should or shouldn't be there isn't really the point.

To even consider a sitting president for such an honor is outrageous.

Only time and history can show us who belongs there.

Yet if you consider it the work of an artist.

Why would you wish to change it and destroy what it was?

would you want the Mona Lisa 'altered' by a new artist?

I'm all for it, put some people to work!

Well,this is how it seems to be playing out Folks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6DwN-zt-24

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVw-H9KDBLs&feature=related

Sorry to have been the Conveyor of Bad News!

I'd like to see it left as is.

Might be the smartest thing to do!

If I were a Christian I could say that they were graven images.

(I don't consider it the work of an artist.)

I personally feel that the natural landscape was better looking. I think they marred the natural landscape with those faces.

Yep, I would vote to blow it up.

We should wait longer before talking about putting Reagan up.

A lot longer.

Like... 50 years.

The natural landscape of NY was more 'better looking' before skyscrapers... would you blow it up? (before you go blowing up statues and such... The only people I have seen that do this is the Taliban extremes.

And what they destroyed of the local culture has become greater for the hole they left behind.

It will come back to get them.

That is no comparison. New York is where people live.

They should have left Mt Rushmore the way it was.

It is not art.

Besides I think it would be fun to blow it up in a great ceremony. Or at the very least, let nature take its course and let it crumble and stop spending tax money to repair it all the time.

That goes double for the Statue of Liberty. Let it rust and fall into the ocean. It represents Lucifer the Light bearer anyway.

(That message is from the destructive side of my psyche.)

If and/or when the Empire of the United States falls, as Rome fell, we will be witness to the crumbling of Mt Rushmore and the rusting of The Statue of Liberty and many other pointless monuments that we have erected and chosen to create and spend(waste) money on over the years.

I probably won't live long enough to see that, but the next generation might.