THE KING'S FAVOR

 

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award the President of the United States can bestow on someone. This award has been in existence since 1963 and although there’s occasionally some questions raised about the worthiness of individual honorees there’s never been any serious controversy about the President’s selection until President Trump chose conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh for the award this week. This prompted me to look at Trump’s, and other recent President’s, selectees of this honor. It didn’t take long to see that like most other aspects of the Trump presidency, his use of this award is not normal.

The first thing that stands out about this is that it was given out during the annual State of the Union (SotU) speech to Congress, this is unprecedented in American history. The SotU speech is a Constitutionally mandated communication between the Executive and the Legislative Branches of government in which the President defines the issues facing the country and their plans to address them. In the era of instant communication and 24-hour new outlets the original intent of the SotU is largely antiquated at this point. For years Presidents have used this opportunity to essentially give a campaign speech highlighting their accomplishments, but there’s always at least the pretext of fulfilling the Constitutional obligation. That all changed this year as Trump modeled the SotU speech on reality TV shows. This was pure political theater including surprise reunions, and the staged stunned look on Limbaugh’s face as Trump made the award announcement. Limbaugh knew ahead of time he would receive the award, I’d even seen it on Facebook beforehand.

The fact that President Trump made a mockery of the SotU speech is bad enough, but if the award had gone to someone at least marginally worthy it’s likely it wouldn’t have been much of a story. The award is intended to honor “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” In the past it’s been given to actors, athletes, scientists, diplomats, politicians, artist, writers, musicians, economists, and philanthropists.

Rush Limbaugh is the exact opposite of the type of person the award was meant to honor. Limbaugh has spent his career sowing division and spreading hate to his radio audience. At the end of this article, I’ve put together a video with a small sampling of the type of hate mongering he practices on a daily basis on his program. He’s built a media empire on appealing to the lowest common denominator with a daily routine of race baiting and misogyny. 

Probably the most directly comparable honoree to Limbaugh is conservative radio commentator Paul Harvey who received the medal in 2005. Harvey, like Limbaugh was an iconic fixture on American radio for decades and brought his conservative take on American culture to millions of his radio listeners. However, unlike Limbaugh, Harvey used his folky style to bring stories from around the country to his audience in a way that, even if you didn’t always agree with him, you could understand the common sense of what he was saying. His radio segments had a way of finding commonalities between people that might not be readily apparent. That’s why even though on the surface there are similarities between Harvey and Limbaugh, Harvey’s Presidential Medal of Freedom raised no protest, while Limbaugh’s award has drawn derision.

When I went through Trump’s previous honorees of this award, Limbaugh’s inclusion seemed less out of place. To be clear, Trump isn’t the first President to show some favoritism to individuals of his own party, but previous Presidents made an effort to be bipartisan in choosing the recipients of the award. President Obama gave the award to President George H.W. Bush, the two-time director of the EPA under Presidents Nixon and Reagan, Willaim Ruckelshaus, longtime Republican Senator Richard Lugar and former Republican Senator and Vice-Presidential nominee Jack Kemp. This isn’t unusual, Presidents Bush and Clinton both gave the award to people of the opposite party as well. Each of the last three presidents also gave the award to a wide variety of people from different disciplines.

The pattern under Trump has been very different. All of his awardees fall into one of two categories, entertainers (primarily athletes) or Republican insiders. President Trump hasn’t given a single award to anyone from any of the arts or sciences. This was the sixth non-entertainer he’s given the award to, all six were influential Republicans including several that were quite controversial compared to most winners of the award, although less so than Limbaugh. The two least controversial picks were long time Republican Senator Orrin Hatch who was often an agent of compromise in the Senate and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who was one of the most divisive modern justices, but it’s hard to argue he wasn’t an important figure in shaping the modern Supreme Court.

The other three Presidential Medal Freedom winners Trump has selected are some of the most controversial honorees other than Limbaugh. First there’s economist Arthur Laffer who is most known for the Laffer curve which states it’s possible to increase revenue by cutting taxes and stimulating economic activity. He was the driving force behind the Reagan tax cuts that led to record deficits. He then advised Kansas Governor Brownback to eliminate many of their taxes and nearly bankrupted the state. He then advised President Trump that the 2017 tax cuts would lead to 6% growth with no increase in the deficit, in reality the tax cuts lead to reduced growth and nearly doubled the deficit. Laffer has been proven wrong over and over, but at least there doesn’t seem to be any personal controversy with this nominee, he’s just incompetent. Miriam Adelson who’s the wife of Republican super donor Sheldon Adelson raised a lot of eyebrows when she won the award. Although she’s done some charity work, the fact that the Adelson’s were the largest donors to Trump’s campaign made her selection for the award seem as having been bought through political donations.

The final Trump selectee for this award was Ed Meese, Attorney General under Ronald Reagan. It’s not unusual for former government officials to be honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, but Ed Meese is an extremely odd selection for this honor. During Meese’s tenure with the Reagan White House he was involved in one scandal after another. In two different investigations he was cited for ethical lapses for taking actions that either directly benefited himself and/or his friends. He was also investigated for obstructing the investigation into the Iran-Contra scandal. Trump seems to have a soft spot for Attorney Generals who cover up Presidential misdeeds. He also caused controversy back in the 1980s by stating there wasn’t any evidence of people going hungry in America in defending Reagan budget cuts and for being openly hostile to the Miranda Supreme Court decision that require the police to advise suspects of their rights.

Like Trump’s approach to most things, he sees the Presidential Medal of Freedom, not as a way to recognize people who have added to American culture, but as a way to reward people who have done something for him. He runs the country the way a mob boss runs the mafia, everything is transactional, do something for me and maybe I’ll do something for you.

Some notes on the companion video I made for this article. The first half of the video is the award ceremony from the SotU followed by just a small sampling of Limbaugh’s racist and sexist commentary. I also want to clarify that when Limbaugh claims Obama made up the statistic about the number of sexual assault victims he is lying, the 1 in 5 statistic Obama mentioned came straight from the CDC. Also, when he says Sandra Fluke was trying to get the government to pay for her birth control that is also a lie. She was lobbying Congress to require insurance companies include birth control in their policies under the Affordable Care Act. But to Limbaugh that made her a slut and a prostitute.