The latest incarnation of the U.S. dollar coin, the Sacagawea golden dollar, is a limited, highly qualified, modest success. Or, more accurately, a non-failure at best.

Chalk this up to the Treasury Department's policy of co-circulation, the same policy that killed all previous attempts at introducing a dollar coin (the "silver dollar" and Susan B. Anthony dollars, for example). We could take a lesson from our neighbors to the north in Canada, and make the wise move of phasing out the paper dollar, but I have a better idea -- a plan to increase circulation of the dollar coin and simultaneously reform the funding of elections...

Require all private funding of election campaigns, whether hard money or soft money, to be paid in Sacagawea dollars. No checks, no paper bills, no stock certificates or donations in kind. Elections are publicly funded, unless you want to go to the considerable effort of amassing and transporting 1 million coins to the candidate of your choice, who then has similar difficulties in spending them.

It's an idea whose time has come. Exercise your so-called "free speech" right to give money to politicians all you want -- the only requirement is that the lingua franca of that speech must be unwieldy dollar coins!

With a little luck, maybe some of the greedier corporate CEOs will meet interesting ends, crushed under the weight of their own influence-purchasing donations. Wouldn't that be a refreshing change in the headlines from all of these depressing Enron dispatches?