Biden’s Final Medal Winners Are Accomplished, Admirable — and Proof of His Political Failure

To some Republicans — who particularly reacted against the inclusion of George Soros, the bankroller of liberal causes and longtime conservative smear-campaign target — it felt like trolling. Trump’s lame-duck honoring of election deniers wasn’t even the first example: As George W. Bush exited the White House, he stopped to confer medals of freedom on Tony Blair and John Howard, the British and Australian prime ministers who had endorsed the calamitous Iraq war that the incoming president had railed against. Consider the Citizen Medal for Ted Kaufman, the longtime Biden staffer who briefly held Biden’s own Senate seat in the hopes that it could be turned over to Biden’s son Beau. Where Biden promised a normal, old-school presidency — and during his term gave medals to bygone GOP luminaries like Elizabeth Dole and Alan Simpson — Trump’s inclination has been to pick at America’s scabs. But Trump also didn’t vow the sort of old-school style that would return events like Medal of Freedom ceremonies to their consensus-oriented 20th-century origins.