Over the last few years, the Bureau of Engraving has radically changed American paper currency. Every bill now has numerous security devices built in to make effective counterfeiting all but impossible. Colors, watermarks, laser holograms, top secret chemicals, and a variety of other ingenious additions have brought our Federal Reserve Notes into the age of high technology. So how about changing one more thing. I have long felt that Andrew Jackson is the least deserving of our presidents to have his mug profiled on our twenty dollar bill. And now, his face is even bigger than before.
I just don't get it. Here was a guy who first became famous by fighting a battle three weeks after the war was over. Then he built his own private army of cut-throats and bushwhackers and slaughtered defenseless Indians, while violating the national sovereignty of another country. His political reputation was manufactured from a lie about him being a humble frontiersman in homespun buckskins, while he was the most prosperous slave-owning planter in Tennessee. Then, as president, Jackson, who swore to uphold the Constitution, ignored a decision by the Supreme Court and set in motion the worst case of American Indian genocide in the nineteenth century. By destroying the Bank of the United States, Jackson ushered in the worst economic depression that the country had seen since the Revolutionary War. And let us not forget his introduction of the political spoils system in America. More politically corrupt and incompetent individuals were placed in government jobs than in any other presidential administration, before or since.
How about this instead? Since we love those heroic general/presidents who find their way onto our coins and bills, I suggest that we get a real hero for the Twenty. Anyone remember Ike? You know, Dwight David Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander of all European forces during World War II. As far as generals go, only George Washington can match up. Then there was Eisenhower the president. Hmm, let's see, he carefully managed international affairs during the height of the Cold War. He negotiated a settlement in the 1956 Suez War. He was responsible for the construction of the Interstate Highway system in America. And talk about taking his oath of office seriously, Eisenhower rigorously enforced the 1954 Brown V Board of Education decision, by sending federal troops to Little Rock in 1957, even though he disagreed with the Court's decision. Then, as he was leavingt office, Ike warned the American people about the growing power of the "military-industrial complex." Too bad we didn't take that more seriously.
And what did President Eisenhower get for all this? He got his profile on our tiniest coin, the dime, only to be removed for his boss during WWII, Franklin Roosevelt. Then he had a short stint on the dollar coin, which ended in 1978. Have you seen a dollar coin lately? It is now adorned by that great American hero, John Tyler. Who you might ask? Does this ring a bell, "Tippecanoe and Tyler too?" He only got to be president because "Tippecanoe," William Henry Harrison, died three weeks into his term. As president, Tyler was so despised, that he could not even get re-nominated by his party for a second term, and he is now on the new dollar coin.
President Eisenhower deserves better than this. Heck, even Grant has both a bill and a nice monument in New York City, while all Ike got was a cheesy statue in Topeka, Kansas. So I hope you will join me in writing to the powers that be in the Treasury Department and asking them to remove that puffed-up and sissified engraving of Jackson from our beloved twenty dollar bill, and replace that Tennessee dandy with a legitimate war hero, Dwight David Eisenhower. OK, I did gloss over a few things about Ike. Yes, it was Eisenhower who gave us Nixon as Vice President, and it was Eisenhower who thought creating two Vietnams was a good idea. Yeah, yeah, he never spoke out against Joe McCarthy during the Red Scare of the Fifties, and he stood by as Fidel Castro took control of Cuba, and when he had a chance to defend the honor of his old boss and friend, General George Marshall, he said. . . well, nothing. Oh yeah, there were those little screw-ups with the Russians, like a failure to help the Hungarians in 1956, Sputnik in 1957, and the U-2 fiasco in 1960. But with all that, he is still a better choice than Jackson, isn't he? No? Then can I interest anyone in Warren Harding? Herbert Hoover?
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