Should we go back to images of the Republic and get the images of people off of our coinage?

Gobrechts99Grapevine

Some believe the larger social problems of the nation are magnified by the idolatry of personalities, starting with Lincoln, who got on a coin. In 1908-1909, the radical departure from tradition embodied by the then "proposed" new Lincoln cent was controversial, because since the beginning of U. S. coinage no real person's image, living or dead, had ever been depicted on the country’s circulating coins. Traditionalists argued this precedent, set by George Washington himself, should be honored forever, but (surprise, surprise) the incumbent President of the United States at the time, Theodore Roosevelt, got the design that he wanted. When the new "Abraham Lincoln penny" was introduced on August 2, 1909, the controversy over the depiction of a real person on a U.S. coin was quickly washed away by an overwhelming tide of Lincoln Cent popularity, which continues unabated to this day.