I thought it was a well minted character vignette.
Dohoho!
Anywho, alternate history is a hobby of mine - so let's examine that aspect of the story, shall we?'
A quick refresher on the parallel coins mentioned in the story:
Goldwater '76 dime
Joe Kennedy Sr. '72 half dollar
John Brown '27 penny
Eugene Victor Debs '44 quarter
Huey Long '58 nickel
William Randolph Hearst '69 silver dollar
Robert E. Lee 1888 three cent piece
Lindbergh '65 dime
Roy Cohn '92 quarter
P.T. Barnum '35 penny
Herbert Hoover '86 nickel
Benedict Arnold '98 quarter
Now what kind of alternate timelines (aTL's) could these each be from? None of these should be too hard because as the story implies, none really need a strong Point of Divergence (PoD) from Our Time Line (OTL). These are all public figures who could have been president (except for John Brown which seems more of a case of someone considered a hero by an ATL society being venerated on a coin).
Goldwater was a Senator, Papa Joe was a diplomat, Debs was the leader of the Socialist Party, Long was a governor, Cohn was a Justice Dep. attorney, Hoover actually was president.
Hearst was a newspaperman who exerted significant influence over policy via public opinion, Lindbergh was the darling of the America First political movement, Barnum was one of America's most beloved public speakers, Arnold and Lee were generals. All of which are plausible jumping points for presidential runs.
Even in a world closely resembling ours in most major points up to the election, many of these men could have become president in the normal course of events. The one's that would have required major PODs quite earlier would primarily be Lee (to prevent the Civil War or prevent Virginia from siding with the Confederacy or weaken his loyalty to Virginia somehow), Kennedy (to either keep the U.S. out of WWII or prevent him from staking his career on appeasement), Arnold (to prevent him from being sidelined in the Continental Army in favor of the less competent gloryhogging general Gates, which caused the dissatisfaction that led him eventually to treason), and most of all Debs. While these other men primarily need things differently in their own lives, not changing their personalities or world events but more along the lines of different decisions or plausible happenstances, Debs requires a significantly different America if we concede the point of him being elected as a socialist and not being an alternate Debs who never got arrested for the Pullman Strike and never read Marx.
But this is all preface. What about the kind of world these men would each leave after a presidency that would think highly enough of them to put their faces on currency?
Goldwater would be frankly as controversial as if we had Reagan or LBJ money today - we don't even have JFK money, and he was practically canonized after his assassination. Modern presidents are too close to modern politics and thus controversial due to partisanship. But if FDR could be put on the dime just one year after his death, putting a mid-60's president on the coin in the 70's isn't totally implausible.
Joe Sr., Huey Long, and Lindbergh could all be alternative Depression/WWII presidents - associated with that challenging time in American history and commemorated for it.
If America changed enough to elect Debs president, he would be transformative enough or a symbol of an existing transformation enough to merit in the eyes of the public a coin.
The rest I'll leave for now for possible thought or discussion, as I seem to be rambling.