It might not be the legal issue front of mind this Thanksgiving, but one of the most charming parts of the annual feast-centric holiday is when the president pardons a turkey.
There’s been a whole lot of debate over who the first president to actually pardon a turkey was — mostly thanks to Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump not really understanding the tradition’s origins in 1997 and 2019, respectively. Clinton said Harry Truman was the first to pardon a turkey, while Trump thought it was Abraham Lincoln.
Both are totally wrong. It’s true that Lincoln did a feathered friend a favor and chose not to kill a turkey for dinner after his son developed a fondness for the bird. But though turkey is commonly the centerpiece of Thanksgiving feasts, the bird Lincoln saved was at the White House for Christmas, meaning Trump’s understanding of the tradition’s origins are apocryphal.
Truman shouldn’t be getting any credit for being the ultimate animal lover either. It is true that he was the first president to receive a Thanksgiving Day turkey from the National Turkey Federation in 1947 — an anniversary Clinton referenced in 1997 — but according to the Truman Library the president was more than happy to indulge in heaps of perhaps-overly-dry meat that November.
“Truman sometimes indicated to reporters that the turkeys he received were destined for the family dinner table,” the Library wrote in 2003.
The turkey lobby kept shipping birds to Washington through the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. John Kennedy was the first president to spare a turkey, when he felt bad for a plump gobbler with a giant bib reading “Good Eating Mr. President.” The bird lived out its remaining days at a farm.
But even as Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford saved the lives of the feathered friends the turkey lobby wanted them to eat, they still didn’t quite take the formalistic legal step of pardoning the turkeys. The first to do so was Ronald Reagan — kind of.
In the midst of the Iran Contra scandal, reporters asked Reagan if he planned to pardon Oliver North and John Poindexter, both of whom were involved in the controversial weapons sale. Reagan dodged the question and instead quipped that he would’ve pardoned Charlie the turkey if his staff told him the bird was headed for an untimely end.
As my political science professors like to tell me, after one president starts doing something, no executive in their right mind would stop doing it if it meant the office losing power or prestige. In that regard, Reagan’s quip might’ve made it so no leader was eager to sentence a turkey to death and thus make citizens — or at least vegetarians — think less of them.
George H.W. Bush issued the first formal pardon for a turkey in 1989, saving the life of a bird who he promised wouldn’t end up on anyone’s dinner table that year.
“He's granted a presidential pardon as of right now,” Bush said.
The tradition has now become totally institutionalized, with turkeys being raised by the National Turkey Federation purely for the purpose of being pardoned. Just because the Federation brings up a few birds with the express purpose of saving their lives doesn’t mean that's their primary goal, though — their website is eatturkey.org, suggesting some ulterior motives than seeing a couple gobblers get off scot free.
The turkeys are pampered before they’re let off the hook for any and all crimes they might’ve committed against the United States, staying at the upscale Willard Hotel since 2013. But life isn’t easy even after the presidents give them a second chance — the pardoned turkeys are sent off to research institutions, where they rarely live longer than two years.
Since the elder Bush used his presidential pardon powers maybe in a way the Founders didn’t quite intend, saving the life of a gobbler has become a chance for presidents to do everything from celebrate democracy to engage in some political satire of their rivals.
In 2004, to tie into the electoral mania the country had just experienced, George W. Bush decided to give citizens yet another thing to vote on: the names of the turkeys to be pardoned. Perhaps emblematic of how burnt out the country was on platitudes of values they heard proclaimed during the election, “Patience” and “Fortitude” lost. Instead, the country was clearly ready to just lounge back, watch football and eat some good food that Thanksgiving, as the winners were “Biscuits” and "Gravy.”
Last year, Joe Biden took the chance to celebrate Democrats’ better than expected performance in that year’s midterms — and also complain about his dog’s propensity for getting into trouble.
“The only red wave this season is going to be a German shepherd, Commander, who knocks over the cranberry sauce on our table,” he said.
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