The Politics of the Presidential Medal of Freedom Revisited: A Sixty-Year Analysis from Kennedy to Biden

• In Event: The US Presidency and Executive Power II

Abstract

Since its establishment in 1963, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (PMOF) has served as the nation's highest civilian honor. As an exercise of symbolic, unilateral presidential power, the awarding of the PMOF provides scholars, political observers, and members of the public insight as to what individuals, groups, and achievements presidents value most. Updating the most comprehensive analysis of PMOF awards, by Kopko et al. (2015), and their accompanying dataset, the proposed paper includes data from the late Obama, first Trump, and Biden administrations. Interestingly, though Donald Trump was accused of politicizing the PMOF by issuing it to conservative allies such as the broadcaster Rush Limbaugh, his choices were no more political than those of other Republican presidents or, for that matter, Democratic chief executives. On the other hand, Trump disrupted what were institutionalized patterns of award giving (McClellan et al. 2024). He awarded the fewest number of PMOFs overall (24 in his first term), held relatively few PMOF ceremonies, and most often focused on athletic accomplishments. Furthermore, Trump was the first president whose efforts to award a PMOF were publicly rejected by intended recipients. In contrast, Joe Biden handed out PMOFs on few occasions but issued the second-highest number in a single term (57—by comparison, Barack Obama awarded 73 in his second term). Similar to those of his Democratic predecessors, Biden’s recipients were diverse demographically and in their achievements (Devine et al. 2024). Trump’s return to the White House comes at a time when the singular importance of the PMOF to presidents is under question. It may be useful to view the PMOF as either one of a cluster of presidential awards or—as Trump’s recent takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts suggests—a tool which presidents use to influence American culture.

Authors

• Christopher J Devine, University of Dayton

• Fletcher McClellan, Elizabethtown College

• Kyle C Kopko, Elizabethtown College