Our eighth president
Guest Commentary
Mack Hall

The new Washington dollar coin (which replaces the rather nice Sacajawea dollar, which replaced the scares-small-children Susan B. Anthony dollar) is another toomuch like-a-quarter coin, and will end its days gnawing its own wooden teeth in the backs of dresser drawers everywhere.

Fling it over the Delaware River? Maybe over Cow Creek.

The coin is not unattractive, in a shiny, carnival-prize way, but like all contemporary American coinage all contemporary American coinage it is of base metal and is intrinsically worthless. The relief on the obverse of our eighth president is very poorly done, with the Marvel Comics monster eyes looking as if they were about to emit death rays, the misshapen jaws swollen from perhaps a really bad toothache, and the wig badly in need of a little hair-gel in the back

Poor George - he didn't deserve this.

The coin tells us that George Washington was our first president, which is what I was taught in school. But G. W. was our eighth president, not our first, succeeding the seven presidents who served the nation from 1781 to 1789 under our post-revolutionary plan of government, the Articles of Confederation.

This first scheme was based on the premise that each former colony was, as the Declaration of Independence stated, an independent state, a nation. But these little countries were so poor and under populated that they were not viable, and a more centralized government was necessary for survival. The result was the Constitutional Convention and the new plan in 1789. Until that point, there were seven presidents, and to deny their existence is perhaps to deny the validity of the United States.

The first President, John Hanson (1781-1782), certainly deserves his own coin, one that is more valuable than a Mardi Gras throwaway. As the first President of the United States he faced a military coup by the army, which had not been paid during the war. Congress, being Congress, ran away (perhaps after passing a non-binding resolution), leaving President Hanson alone to deal with a divided country with rebellious soldiers and no budget.

Had President Hanson failed, the American experience might have anticipated the Mexican one, two hundred years of military coups and instability. If John Hanson had been the first president of the newly independent Mexico, perhaps Americans would be crossing the deserts and the Rio Grande in search of stability.

Hanson wisely ordered all foreign soldiers, including the once-helpful French, out of America and banned the flying of foreign flags. He resolved the army's problems, established the foreign service, the war department (now renamed, in an Orwellian fashion, The Department of Defense), and the Treasury. He also designed the Great Seal of the United States, still in use. Not bad for a full, oneyear term!

There are those who say that President Hanson doesn't matter, that all this is but history trivia. And, hey, after all, why should we make the schoolbooks correct? Why should be teach our children what really happened in American history?

The new Washington dollar is ugly, factually inaccurate, and, because of it's size, unusable. And I have no doubt that whoever designed and approved this play money received a huge bonus.

Mack Hall is a resident of Kirbyville