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1. This is not the most consequential thing on the nation’s mind this evening. But President Trump’s election eve announcement of a 1776 Commission underlines one of the odder failures of his presidency. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-establishing-presidents-advisory-1776-commission/
2. Since 1989, presidents have handed out National Humanities Medals. Obama gave out 71, spread over eight ceremonies. Trump gave none until last year, when he awarded four: to a college, a philanthropist, a novelist, and a chef.
3. The Humanities Medals have all the features Trump is usually drawn to—they’re awarded at his discretion, they’re gaudy, they have a ceremony, and they make important and famous people grateful to him. But he’s mostly ignored them.
4. On the 2016 campaign trail, and in office, Trump has cast himself as the culture-warrior-in-chief. Well, presidents have a great deal of power over culture! They can host White House performances, award honors, and generally elevate scholars and artists whose work they like.
5. Obama understood this. Many of his awardees were historians—distinguished scholars of a variety of subjects, but with a particular clustering around historians of race in the United States. By honoring them, he elevated their work, and the importance of their fields.
6. Trump, and those around him, dislike the cast of much recent historical scholarship. But as a culture warrior, Trump has been singularly inept—standing surrounded by an arsenal of powerful weapons, and instead of wielding them, choosing to scream churlish insults at his foes.
7. Announcing a presidential commission on the eve of an election, instead of four years earlier, when it might have had time to actually advance his agenda, is a fitting coda. And stuffing it full of Cabinet members—including the HUD secretary!—instead of scholars is, too.
8. Perhaps today’s announcement will generate chyrons that soothe the president or please his supporters. But for the rest of us, it should serve as a reminder that after four years, the man still has no understanding of the office he inhabits, or the nation he purports to serve.
