10-cent portraits

Imagine this: you go into Starbucks for some coffee and the price comes out to $1.90. You pay two dollars. Just as you go to pocket your change, you glance at the face on the dime. It's Ronald Reagan.\nWait a second, you think, something is wrong. Surely you couldn't have paid only $1.90 for coffee at Starbucks. It was probably the cashier's fault, you think. \nBut, no. The Gipper's face is on the dime?\nThat might become a reality if Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) has his way. He has introduced a bill in the U.S. House to replace, or even alternate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's profile on the dime with Reagan's.\nSouder wrote to colleagues the dime was a particularly fitting way to honor the president because Reagan "was wounded … by a bullet that had ricocheted and flattened to the size of a dime."\nAnd, if you know your history, that explanation makes sense when you consider Alexander Hamilton was shot in that infamous duel by a tightly-wound 10-dollar bill.\nIn reality, it's more politics than a bullet that is fueling the push to get the 40th president on a piece of money. Reagan's iconic nature is arguably to Republicans what FDR's is to Democrats; both men were central bedrocks in the successes of their parties.\n"This is the time for us to make a statement, right now, because we feel Ronald Reagan's been unfairly trashed," he said, referring to the recent controversial TV miniseries about Reagan which was pulled from CBS because prominent conservatives believe you're too stupid to distinguish a dopy movie from history.\nThe Washington Times quoted Souder, explaining a coin bearing Reagan's image would help ensure "the Reagan legacy of expanding freedom could not be distorted by his enemies."\nI'm the first to admit Mr. Reagan and I have very little in common, besides the fact that we've both done a little bit of acting (I don't recall whether I've ever sold arms for hostages). But I am incredibly skeptical that putting him on a piece of money is all that's necessary to protect his legacy.\nPresidents Washington and Lincoln aren't on money as a point of order to protect legacies; they have legacies already protected by the annals of history. They have been examined through the eyes of time, and decades passed before they were put on money. \nBeth Deisher, the editor of Coin World magazine and a voice of reason, told the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette that while she doesn't oppose the idea of the Reagan dime, she believes "bouncing off probably the most prominent Democrat of all time for a Republican president -- I've got to believe there would be retaliation."\nI think she has a good point. I'm not against a Reagan dime; it still spends all the same no matter whose face is on it, you know?\nI just think it sets a bad precedent. Politicizing who appears on the money is risky. Reagan left office a mere 14 years ago, and his presidency still feels so fresh it's invoked in politics today.\nAdding him this soon is as bad a precedent as when we originally added FDR to the dime in 1946, and later John F. Kennedy on the half-dollar in 1964. Those additions came after their deaths and acted as more of a statement of grief rather than with full regard to their contributions.\nI have no doubt Ronald Reagan will appear on a piece of money in the future. I just wonder how much time has to pass before it's not considered a political maneuver like it is now.