The U-S Treasury Secretary was at the Iowa State Fair this morning, handing out special nickels to kids. The new “keelboat nickle” depicts the boat explorers Lewis and Clark rode as they traveled the Missouri River in search of a northwest passage. As always, Thomas Jefferson’s mug is on the front of the nickle. He’s the President who dispatched Lewis and Clark to explore the new western territory. Before handing out the coins to a long line of kids, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow spoke to a fairgrounds’ crowd of several hundred. Snow told the fairgoers his father went to grad school at Drake University in Des Moines, and taught there for a couple of years in the 1930s, and Snow said his dad was “going to be smiling down from heaven” because he always told his son he needed to see the Iowa State Fair. Snow, an architect of President Bush’s economic policy, said the Bush-era tax cuts were “oxygen” for the economy. Snow said the economy isn’t growing as fast as he and the President would like, but Snow points to certain stats as evidence “the economy is in a lot better position than it was a year ago.” The U-S Mint is launching a series of new nickels to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the “keelboat nickle” is the second in that series.