The Changing Face of Change

Legislation sent to the President late last week calls for a new series of dollar coins that will feature every American president (even Warren G. Harding). The series will begin in 2007, and four new coins will be issued each year. Legislators hope that Americans will use these coins instead of paper dollars, which have a shorter life-span and are therefore more expensive for the government to produce. The government last issued special dollar coins in 2000 with the Sacagawea dollar, a coin that (despite a nifty ad campaign featuring George Washington himself) never caught on.

I'm not sure why Congress thinks that the presidential dollars will succeed where other dollar coins have failed, especially at a time when fewer and fewer people carry cash in any form. Metal money is fast becoming irrelevant; Americans today prefer magnetic, or electronic, currency. And unremarkable past attempts at introducing dollar coins have shown that Americans, unlike Canadians, prefer a paper dollar.


Moreover, each of the 43-or-so coins in this series will feature a white guy; and some of these white guys already appear on U.S. currency. The Sacagawea dollar, despite being largely ignored, was refreshing in that it put a Native American woman on American money. Likewise, the Susan B. Anthony dollar, in addition to its hendecagonal design, was nice because it featured a leader of the women's suffrage movement. If we're going to issue new forms of cash, these forms need to be more diverse than the current crop of legal tender.

Like I said, several presidents, including Nashville's own Andrew "Trail of Tears" Jackson, already appear on American money. Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson each have a bill and a coin. Do we really need another monetary denomination bearing their likeness? If we must produce new forms of cash, why not a series of dollars featuring important American abolishionists and civil-rights leaders (such as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Ella Baker, and Andrew Young)? or how about great American artists (such as Mark Twain, Georgia O'Keefe, and Fats Domino)?