One of the many national treasures that the Spite House has made inaccessible to the American public is the famous and majestic sculpture of four U.S. presidents on Mt. Rushmore. Blocking access to this monument has generated some of the sharpest criticism at the president for his political theater.
The Sioux Falls Business Journal wrote on Saturday that rangers with the now much-maligned National Park Service were ordered not only to close off entrances to the park but to place traffic cones along the highway viewing areas outside South Dakota’s most popular attraction. Tourists who drove long distances to glimpse the larger-than-life carvings were understandably angry.
In a way the president’s decision to close the road to the monument seems like bad juju. As recently as last May, three out of ten professors at George Washington University said that they thought that Obama’s face belonged on the mountain alongside Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt. Now you have to wonder whether the sand sculpture of Obama on display at the 2012 Democratic Convention is as close as he’s going to get.
Along those lines, the blog Barracuda Brigade has offered a pictorial “message” for Obama from the presidents currently on Mt. Rushmore: