In one of the interactive exhibits at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home in Virginia, you’re asked to flip open the doors of his “cabinet,” each of which contains a portrait of its members — Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. As I opened the drawers, I couldn’t help but think of how one 19th century journalist crystallized America as “a nation created by geniuses to be run by idiots.”
Read MoreU.S. $1 bill, obverse, series 2009.