Why wasn’t it done a long time ago?

More of Today in How Dense is Donald Trump?: he doesn’t understand chronology.

Yesterday, it happened again, when Trump signed the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commemorative Coin Act, which directs the Treasury to issue a commemorative coin to honor the 100th anniversary of American women getting the right to vote. After signing the measure – which passed both the House and Senate unanimously – the president decided to take a moment to reflect on what he considered important: his own awesomeness.

“I am curious why wasn’t it done a long time ago and also, well, I guess the answer to that is because now I am president and we get things done.

“We get a lot of things done that nobody else got done.”

Well, if Trump is “curious” why other presidents didn’t sign the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commemorative Coin Act, I can help. In this country, the women’s suffrage movement led to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1919, and its ratification in 1920.

No one tried to honor the centennial of this because – and this is important – centennials mark the hundredth anniversary of things. In order to recognize the centennial of something that happened in 1920, we had to wait until around 2020, because that’s how time works.

It’s how dating works, at least. We weren’t allowed to celebrate the centennial ten years ago, or fourteen, or eighty-seven. The Academy is strict about that kind of thing.

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