I like who’s on Mount Rushmore now. Washington was the indispensable man. Without him, no us. Jefferson wrote the words on his own gravestone, and identified himself first as: writer. As indeed he was. "A proper respect for the opinion of mankind…" His words gave form and voice to our intentions. Lincoln was a poet, a rough man with a bit of an artist’s sensibility. He showed America, among very many other things, that it didn’t matter where you were born, or in what circumstances, you could rise. Teddy Roosevelt I have always liked, and think if I’d known him I would have found him charming and compelling. Edith Wharton did. He was brilliant, optimistic, activist. But he was a bloody-minded man, and I must admit I would not be sad if his lovely face were replaced by the lovelier one of Ronald Reagan. But Reagan himself would likely not want that. He’d say, "Leave it alone."

Okay, what women would be good? So many. In no order: Calamity Jane — the spirit of the old west. Dorothy Thompson — journalist, thinker, doer. Dorothy Day — "Who will help the poor?" Jane Addams of Hull House — "Will you help the lonely and afraid?" By 1900, there were 100 Hull settlement houses in America.

In these, immigrants learned how to be Americans, what it is to be American. And they were welcomed. Abigail Adams — "Remember the ladies," she wrote her husband, who was helping to create the means of operation of a great nation. As much as any man who fought in Valley Forge, the women of the revolutionary era gave birth to this country. The unsinkable Molly Brown — "Row, boys! Come on and row!," she said as the Titanic went down. That’s the attitude. Fanny Brice — "Funny Girl." Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan — the impossible is possible. Edith Wharton — the sophisticated New York lady as hard working artist, and enjoyer of life. Emily Dickinson — all alone, in her own way, writing her poems and putting them in the bureau.

And that’s just scratching a bit of the surface and not digging down. I would say, in general we make too much, now, of politics, and of political power, and media power. But those who help people in other ways, the poets and welcomers and pioneers and saints and entertainers — they do more to touch lives, and change our way of experiencing life. Molly Brown’s story is ultimately more moving, more rousing, than the work of any hundred congressmen and clerks.