Ronald Reagan Lives On -- in Schools, Streets and a Warship Bearing His Name

Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday falls on Sunday, Feb. 6.

But Grover Norquist, the conservative Republican who founded Americans for Tax Reform, wants something more permanent than mere speeches and celebrations to memorialize the 40th president of the United States.

As founder of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, Norquist dreams of the day when all 3,130 U.S. counties, parishes, boroughs and independent municipalities have something, anything -- a school, a street, a library -- named for Ronald Reagan.

This president earned it fair and square because "he broke the back of the Soviet Union and turned the economy around," Norquist told Politics Daily. Reagan left office in 1989, publicly announced he was battling Alzheimer's disease in 1994 and died a decade later at 93.

"Every school, road, or courthouse that we name after Ronald Reagan becomes a teaching moment. It will open the door for parents to explain to young children who Ronald Reagan was and to provide a catalyst for learning to those who were too young to remember him in their early years," proclaims the Legacy Project website.

Since its founding in 1997, some 20 states and the nation's capital have affixed Regan's name to a piece of real estate, an educational program, stamp collection or exhibition, according to a University of Texas survey updated last year.

Not surprisingly, California -- Reagan's adopted state where he launched himself as a movie and TV actor, a governor and successful presidential candidate -- and Illinois -- where he was born, grew up and went to college -- have the greatest number of Reagan-related sites.

Another handful are overseas, including a U.S. missile-testing range on the Marshall Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a road in Ballyporeen, Ireland, where Reagan's paternal ancestors lived, and a square in Krakow, Poland.

"There are 600 to 800 things in this country named after Martin Luther King. There are 600 to 800 things named after President John F. Kennedy," Norquist told me. The 100 or so places named for Reagan are just the beginning.

He wants more than parity, however, and he's not alone. One cannot accuse Reagan admirers of failing to think big. "Do you really need two Dakotas?" Norquist asked impishly. "You could have one Dakota and one state of Reagan. We're negotiating with Puerto Rico. They change their name in return for statehood." Ah, that's a joke. Maybe.

Back in 1999, Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) began pushing to add Reagan's enormous carved face to South Dakota's Mount Rushmore, joining those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Photographic art images of Reagan on Rushmore are available online.

"The question is, does Reagan deserve to be on his own mountain? Of course he does. It's a different question than should we change a national landmark," said Norquist, who told me that several western Republicans of his acquaintance own mountainous property that might be suitable for a Rushmore-like sculpture.

The great re-branding campaign, although slow, is certainly diverse, with one target being cold, hard cash.

Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., wants to replace Ulysses Grant on all $50 bills, and last year rounded up 13 House Republican co-sponsors.

Then there is the case of the dueling dimes, which have been the sole domain of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's face since 1945, a year after his death. Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.) introduced a Reagan dime bill in 2003 and got 80 co-sponsors, prompting Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) to round up more than 100 pro-FDR colleagues for his measure to leave the 10-cent piece alone. For the record, Nancy Reagan opposed a Ronnie dime.

Norquist said he could live with a compromise in which half of all new dimes bear Reagan's visage, and the other half retain Roosevelt. It's quite possible however, that with Congress grappling with bazillion-dollar deficits, this is small change in the larger legislative picture.

The greatest irony in nomenclature may be the sprawling Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center just blocks from the White House, unanimously named by Congress in 1995, six years after this relentless foe of big government left office.

At a final cost of $816 million, the Reagan Building was the nation's most expensive federal edifice when it opened in 1998, and at 3.1 million square feet, remains second only to the Pentagon in size.

One longtime Reagan aide thought it was unworthy of the vaunted Reagan name. "I frankly do not think it is a fitting memorial," said Lynn Nofziger, who helped elect him governor and president. "It's big and ostentatious. It is symbolic of big government, and he was opposed to big government."

Michael Reagan, the adopted son of the former president and actress Jane Wyman, is spreading his father's name overseas. The conservative Republican and former radio talk show host has gotten into the presidential legacy business himself.

In November 2009, he donated a permanent Ronald Reagan exhibition to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum at the site of the Berlin Wall that once divided East and West Germany. It was President Reagan who famously taunted Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," which was demolished by anti-Soviet protesters in 1989.

Not all conservatives have embraced the name-everything-for-Reagan brandwagon.

"There is something un-Reaganesque about trying to plaster his name all over the country the way Lenin was plastered over Eastern Europe, Mao over China and Saddam Hussein all over Iraq," conservative columnist George Will told the Washington Post. "It's time for us to rescue Ronald Reagan and his legacy from some of his more zealous friends."

Click through the slide show below for some photos of things named after Ronald Reagan: