Last week, I made my case for Andrew Jackson being the worst president of all time. But whom should we replace him with on the twenty dollar bill?
First, let me say that I adamantly oppose immortalizing “Great Leaders” by stamping their images onto money. It’s a practice as old coins themselves, and its purpose hasn’t changed much since ancient times.
It wasn’t just runaway ego that led Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to order their likenesses engraved on Macedonian silver tetradrachms and Roman denari respectively. They and countless other politicians have done it as a way to institutionalize their leadership and cement their positions as charismatic leaders. Getting their faces on coins of the realm signified their power and prestige, and lent credibility to their rule.
All of the people on American money are already deceased, but enshrining them on coins and bills serves a similar purpose. When the United States inscribes the images of dead presidents and founding fathers on money, it is exalting them as sacred to the nation. It’s a way for the state to enhance its legitimacy and sanctify a preferred version of its history. It also glosses over all the crappy stuff those people did. Of course everyone does crappy things in their life, some more than others. For many of the guys on our money, it includes killing Indians and/or owning black people.
Glorifying politicians by putting them on money is imperial iconography, plain and simple. I wish we would end the practice altogether, but I know that’s a losing battle. So as a halfway measure, maybe I can just get us thinking about who we’d like to actually see on our currency. And to that end, replacing Andrew Jackson would be a good start.
I’ve already explained 
why I deem Jackson an absolutely disastrous president. But we also need to consider the twenty dollar that bill he (dis)graces. These days, it is arguably the truest form of American money. In other words, we’ve put our worst president on our best bill.
After two-hundred plus years of unevenly paced inflation, the 20 is now perfectly positioned in our commercial sweet spot. It solves your problems without creating new ones. The twenty dollar bill is the most common denominator, the easiest answer to the math puzzle atop the cash register. Just hand one over, confident that the riddle has been solved; you won’t come up short, you won’t overreach by much. Nor does a $20 note upset the cashier by emptying all the precious smaller bills from the register. A 20 (or two) gets the job done quickly and efficiently. Everyone’s happy; the cashier has your money and you have some more crap.
No wonder then that the twenty dollar bill has become the only currency flowing from many ATMs, those magical, money-spouting machines that serve as our economy’s lifeblood. Or that in some quarters (pardon the pun) at the turn of the century, the 20 was affectionately known as a “food stamp” for its ease at covering your share of the common restaurant bill.
It today’s America, the twenty dollar bill is simple, elegant, and ubiquitous, and it deserves a lot better than a crazy haired, ethnic cleanser who actually destroyed our national bank; more than 175 years later, we’re still the only developed nation without a central bank to manage currency.
Thanks, Andy!
Indeed, my urge to get Jackson off the 20 is so strong that I’d even be willing to go down the path of least resistance, which would inevitably lead us to Ronald Reagan. For a while now, there’s been a movement afoot to get The Gipper’s name on every goddamn thing in this country that doesn’t move. Thus far The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, which was founded by anti-tax guru Grover Norquist, has helped get Reagan seared onto all sorts of stuff from Alabama to Wyoming. They’re even angling to have it branded on the Pentagon, the International Space Station, and a street in Copenhagen. For Lord knows what reason.
No fan of Reagan myself, I’m not enamored with the idea of slapping his mug on the 20. But at this point, I’ll take what I can get.
However, if I could simply wave a wand and make it happen, whom would I put on the twenty dollar bill? None other than James A. Garfield.
What? One of those anonymous, bearded guys from the Gilded Age? A president who’d been on the job for only a few months when he was gunned down by Charles Guiteau, a delusional head case, religious whack job, and all around failure who even had trouble getting laid when he belonged to a utopian sex cult?
Yup. That James Garfield. And he’s got as good a case as anyone to be on the twenty: elected in 1880, he was the 20th president.
Indulge me. We’ve already
got Washington on the 1. Maybe we could take Lincoln off the 5, give that to fifth presdient James Monroe, and then print out a special 16 dollar bill for Honest Abe.
Just think about all the stuff they’ll start pricing at $15.99
Besides, with Garfield on the 20, we could give that bill a new nickname. Start calling them Jimmy G’s. It ain’t all about the Benjamins, man, it’s about the Jimmy G’s.
Okay, maybe not. But a man can dream, can’t he?