"Mr. Bush, PUT UP THIS MONUMENT!"

Rep. James Hansen (R-Utah) knows why Ronald Reagan deserves a memorial on Washington's National Mall: He "helped restore the American people's faith in our system of government . . . and returned pride in being an American."

Like his hero, Hansen is a man of action. He has proposed a bill, H.R. 452, that would (1) overturn a current law requiring a public figure to be dead for 25 years before a Mall memorial can be considered and (2) establish a commission to recommend a site and design no later than February 2003. The bill has already passed in the House Resources Committee. Now it's up to the full Congress and President Bush.

A California license plate, high-seas aircraft carrier or federal building filled with jack-booted bureaucrats is all well and good, but a larger-than-life leader deserves a larger-than-life honor. By elevating Reagan to the stature of Washington and Lincoln we will, at long last, catch up to the rest of the world, which for many years in a myriad of ways has paid him proper tribute:

* Angola. "The Gipper Stump." This polished-oak peg leg features a heart-felt message from the Cold War commander-in-chief, who worked with the South African apartheid state to keep Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA terrorists armed and dangerous, thus keeping the Angolan market for artificial limbs booming. "Thanks for taking one for the Gipper," the inscription reads. "My best to you and any remaining appendages. --Ronnie"

* Argentina. "The Reagan Islands." Technically, the former Falkland/Malvinas Islands are no longer the property of Argentina, but Argentinians voted for the new name to honor Ronnie's role in the restoration of civilian rule in their country. His enthusiastic support for the torture-prone, anti-Semitic, magical generals (they made dissidents and their relatives "disappear") persuaded them Reagan would take their side if they seized the disputed islands. They were wrong, and Margaret Thatcher's counterattack so devastated and humiliated the generals that they handed the government back to civilians.

* Cambodia. "Reagan Skull Bag." This handy Khmer Rouge carrying sack holds up to 25 skulls. The Skull Bag recognizes the Reagan administration's unstinting support for Pol Pot's assaults on Cambodians from 1981 to 1989.

* Costa Rica. "El Rancho Reagan." The former "front farm" of a CIA and contra collaborator, El Rancho Reagan is preserved in its mid-1980s pristine prime. Contra killers lounge in the backyard, the safe overflows with cash to bribe Costa Rican officials to ignore violations of their nation's neutrality, and kilos of coke are on hand for transhipment.

* El Salvador. "The Reagan Missionary Position." No, not a sexual position for raping American churchwomen (for that would be in poor taste), but a position as in a stand. The Reagan Missionary Position, formulated by high officials Al Haig and Jeane Kirkpatrick, is that the three nuns and one layworker were pro-Marxist "political activists" and thus hardly innocent. Besides, their deaths were accidents, not planned executions. Haig explained that the churchwomen ran or were perceived to have run a "roadblock" and may have gotten caught in a guerrilla-National Guard "exchange of fire." Were they also raped in the crossfire? The Reagan Missionary Position's lips say no, but its eyes say yes.

* Guatemala. "The Reagan ŒBum Rap' Rap." Grandmaster Ronnie first laid down this rap in 1982 to discredit reports by Amnesty International and others of the army's slaughter of thousands of Indian villagers in the first months of General Efrain Rios Montt's rule. Ronnie rapped that Rios Montt (an evangelical minister nicknamed the "born-again butcher") was getting a "bum rap." The beauty of the bum-rap rap is that it bolsters "military impunity," regarded by Reagan as a cornerstone of client-state pseudo-democracy.