The New Caesarism: The Proposed Trump Coin and Arch Would Symbolize an Imperial Presidency

The Trump Administration is proposing a coin featuring the image of the current holder of the office of the presidency while Donald Trump is proposing a public-private partnership to build a commemorative arch in Washington for the 250th anniversary of American Independence that the real estate tycoon admits would be partly a monument to himself. The coin and arch would be tangible examples of the autocratic Trump’s Caesarism, as both are examples of practices of the Roman Emperors that were eschewed by the American Founding Fathers in favor of symbols of the Roman Republic. I had posted recently about Trump’s symbolic rejection of the Republican vales of the Founders in his gilding of the Oval Office, but the Trump coin and arch would be more than symbolic. An image of an incumbent president on a general circulation coin minted by the United States would be unprecedented. The only coin ever minted to bear the image of a sitting president was a joint image of the incumbent and another figure on a commemorative coin (i.e. not a general circulation coin, but one minted for collectors) for the Sesquicentennial in 1926. As I have posted previously, the Founders did not want the images of any living person, on coins. The Roman Emperors had used coins bearing their own images, or those of their family, to promote themselves as a form of state propaganda. The first U.S. coins minted thus featured images of the Roman allegorical figure of Liberty on their obverses, with eagles or wreaths on the reverses. Other devices were featured in the later Nineteenth Century, but it was not until 1893 when even a commemorative coin was struck for the 400th Anniversary of Columbus’ Discovery of the New World, and not until 1909 when the Lincoln Cent was first minted on the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s death that any images of real individuals appeared on any American coins. Federal law later forbade the minting of coins with the incumbent president’s image. Even commemorative coins do not feature the incumbent Chief Executive’s image, as there is a five-year waiting period until after a former president’s death. Congress would have to vote for an exception. The Trump Administration would be using the coin minted with public money to promote Trump’s popular image for political purposes or in the interest of Trump’s private businesses. In a similar way, the Roman Caesars would construct commemorative arches that bore the Emperors’ names in honor of their military conquests. An arch commemorating American independence, or those who died in the Revolutionary War or all the wars since independence would be appropriate, but not one that would be at least partly in honor of an incumbent president or associated with him as much or even more than those it would be ostensibly intended to honor. Otherwise, a president would be tempted to use public dollars to construct monuments to himself to promote himself politically, perhaps in a way that is not appropriate. The National Monuments Commission would by law have to approve any such plan, but if the autocratic Trump engages in his typical practice of stacking such bodies by dismissing the current members, or ignoring such legal safeguards altogether, and the supine Congress and overly deferential Supreme Court allow him to get away with it, then Trump would thereby crown himself the American Caesar. The Republican virtues of executive restraint, the separation of powers, the rule of law, and representative governance would have been violated and cast aside in favor of an imperial presidency and all the dangers it poses.