A half-serious proposal: now that we're done with the 50-state quarters, I'd like to see 234 quarters with ordinary Americans citizens on the back, one for each year of independence.
The criteria: they must be dead, they must have lived ordinary lives, committing no crimes and reaching no great achievement, none may have been elected to higher than municipal office; each must be randomly selected from a demographically representative sample of thousands from each year.
Unnamed on the coin, each would of course receive some description on a website somewhere.
And then I would have an artists' competition for the engraving of each - with the only artistic criteria being that the subject be recognizable, individual and dignified.
The American Citizens' series. And if an interest group (veterans, lawyers, whatever) hijacks the idea, I'll disavow it - it has to be about ordinary people of our past, full stop.
