Senator Patrick Toomey’s office has been circulating a note of concerns about President Trump’s nominee to the Fed, Judy Shelton. The note doesn’t say how the powerful Pennsylvanian will vote. It does set up an ironical possibility: That the one member of the Banking Committee prepared to say that a price rule tied to precious metals is an “intellectually defensible” approach to monetary policy may doom the nomination of the most eloquent advocate of a role for gold in our monetary system.

That would be a setback for the cause of honest money. Were we Ms. Shelton — a stretch to be sure — we’d get word to Mr. Toomey that we take his point and are with him on the substantive issue. It has to do with whether our central bank should wade into the fray over trade policy. In both the hearing and the memo that followed, Mr. Toomey focused on Ms. Shelton’s seeming willingness for the Fed to race to the bottom with foreign central banks bent on lowering interest rates to gain trade advantages.

“We don’t get to control other countries’ monetary behavior,” the Pennsylvanian protested at Ms. Shelton’s confirmation hearing. Ms. Shelton responded by saying she agreed with the Senator that monetary policy of the Fed is directed toward “achieving our domestic economic objectives” and has been “outlined very clearly by Congress.” She was trying, she suggested, merely to note that among the factors the Fed faces is the “political context of the global economy.”

That cut no mustard with Mr. Toomey, who warned that she was pointing toward a “dangerous path.” No sooner was the hearing over than Mr. Toomey’s camarilla circulated the memo. It dilated on what it called “concerning evidence” on Ms. Shelton’s views. It went through her testimony and her columns over the years in the Wall Street Journal. We view the columns as magnificent, but we don’t mind saying Mr. Toomey raised serious points about the Fed’s role.

One thing to note is the role — or non-role — of the Fed in exchange rate policy. The Fed isn’t the agency with the remit in respect of exchange rates and foreign currency manipulation. She was right, in past writings, to suggest that Mr. Trump’s fury over currency manipulation could help light the way to monetary reform. We never took her, though, as suggesting that the Fed target foreign countries. That role belongs to the Treasury Department, if it belongs anywhere.

It wouldn’t be Ms. Shelton’s job at the Fed to defend the president who appointed her. Nor would she need to. The fact is that Mr. Trump is ahead of the field on the currency question. For the first time, a currency chapter with teeth was written into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. The Center for Strategic and International Studies even calls USMCA’s chapter 33, which deals with currency, a “new precedent.” The currency issue is also in the new China trade pact.

Which brings us back to the memo Mr. Toomey’s aides are circulating. If he’s prepared to say at Ms. Shelton’s hearing that he deems a role for gold in the monetary system as “intellectually defensible,” then he can’t be happy with the fact that in the past generation — the first 20 years of this century — the value of the one-dollar Federal Reserve note has plunged to little more than a 1,600th of an ounce of gold from the 265th of an ounce it fetched at the start of George W. Bush’s administration.

Few of the heroes on this issue — not Ms. Shelton, nor, to name but a few, James Grant, Ron Paul, Steve Forbes, and Lewis Lehrman — expect monetary reform to happen overnight. None look to the Fed to accomplish such reform. Its mandates are stable prices and full employment. Only Congress can legislate an honest standard of money. However, neither should the Fed be — as it has often appeared to be — an opponent of reform. In our view, with Mr. Toomey in the Senate and Ms. Shelton at the Fed, America would have a terrific team.