Say It Isn't So, Mr. President

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I admit it. I am an egghead. I am a product of the same elite cultural milieu from which come most of Trump's most vehement critics. 

I may be a traitor to my class, but I am still of that class. Academics, of the 1950s and 60s type. My dad grew up with his Jewish mom hoping that he could pass as a WASP at Harvard, despite his working-class Bronx background. 

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Think Arthur Schlesinger. Tweed. Soft spoken. Seemingly, but only seemingly, modest. Understated. 

That didn't exactly work out, and by the time I was a teenager, the age of WASPs running things was already over. But I picked up some of the attitudes. Among those is an attitude that disdains hypemasters and braggarts, of which Donald Trump most certainly is. 

So I still cringe when I see things like this:

I mean, really?! Do we have to go there? 

Trump signed bipartisan legislation in 2020 authorizing the Treasury Secretary to issue dollar coins during the 2026 calendar year carrying designs that are “emblematic of the United States semiquincentennial.”

That law states that no person, living or dead, could be included on the reverse side of the coin — but some have argued it appears to allow for Trump’s portrait (or other living people) to remain on the coin face.

However, federal law is generally understood to prohibit any living person from appearing on most currency. When Congress created the Presidential $1 Coin Program in 2007, it also dictated that no living presidents, or those who had died in the past two years, would be featured on those coins. And an 1866 law fully prohibits living people from appearing on paper currency, though it doesn’t specifically mention coinage.

The final design appears to be a notable scaling back from the ambitious draft design obtained by POLITICO in October. That design featured Trump on both sides of the coin, with the reverse side depicting him holding his fist in the air with the words “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT” inscribed above him.

When reached for comment, the Treasury Department said that the coins are composed of non-precious metals with a gold-like finish on the exterior. They added that the coins will be available for purchase in rolls and bags in the fall.

The department directed questions regarding the legality of the coins to a comment from the acting chief of the Mint’s Office of Design Management at a January meeting of the Commission of Fine Arts, in which she said legal researchers at the Mint and Treasury had determined the proposed coin would not violate any laws.

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No doubt a lot of Trump supporters will laugh, and with good reason. For all the cringe factor this has for supporters of Trump like me, they see the humor of Trump trolling the libs, who will go absolutely crazy with anger. It's the same schtick Trump pulled with the Kennedy Center (a president who really pulled off the fake Arthur Schlesinger bit well!), attaching his name to it. 

It was hugely amusing to many of Trump's supporters, but to those of us who still have a vague hope that the model of decorum set by Ronald Reagan (or Kennedy, for that matter, who in public pulled off the role so well even though he was a disgusting pig in private) still should apply to the president. 

Trump is not as crass as Kennedy or Johnson were in private. They really were pigs, and Trump, by all accounts, is a much nicer guy than many presidents have been in private. 

But the "own the libs" shtick can get tiresome at times. Do we really have to use some potential loophole in the law to put his face on a commemorative coin? 

Really?

No doubt there will be lawsuits. A controversy. More discussions about fascism and threats to democracy, all over a coin that just as easily could have had George Washington, an eagle, or even Ronald Reagan. 

Reagan would have been a great troll, without giving nearly the ammunition to Trump's enemies. 

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The number may not be large, but it's stunts like this that drive away some number of people who have some sympathy for Trump's policies but who just can't stand his personality. 

Why go there? There are far more important fights to be had. You don't have to grab every opportunity to stick it to the libs, or in this case, politicize a coin that commemorates our 250th anniversary. 

I'm generally skeptical that there is much room for bipartisanship in these tumultuous times, but it's worth making a nod to it sometimes. And this would have been a good one. Unfortunately, the whole Semiquincentennial celebration has been a bust, and while that is not all Trump's fault, he might have made a better try at it. 

I remember the Bicentennial, and despite 1976 being a bad year in a bad decade, we pulled it off beautifully. Watergate and the evacuation of Saigon were fresh in everybody's mind; we had a president for whom nobody had voted, and yet Americans were proud of our history and said so.  

This time around? It's been disappointing. It's not all Trump's fault, of course, but it's stunts like this that make it more difficult than it has to be. 

Whew. Glad I got that off my chest. Now I can read the comments below that call me a Never Trumper. 

Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.  

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