Ideologically, Obama believed in the power of activism—especially on civil rights—and in the power of government, and both spheres were amply represented. He honored civil-rights heroes (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner; John Lewis; Shirley Chisholm; Harvey Milk; the American Indian leader Elouise Cobell) and public servants (Robert Gates, John Paul Stevens, John Dingell, Newton Minow, George H. W. Bush).

There aren’t as many names to go on for Trump, but the picks so far seem to reflect a few things about his personality. One, he is a big fan of celebrities and athletes, who make up four of his seven awardees. Second, he is strongly partisan-minded and highly critical of the press. Obama picked George H. W. Bush; Bush’s son chose the Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and the former New York Times editor A. M. Rosenthal. It’s all but impossible to imagine Trump reaching across the aisle or celebrating journalists. Indeed, Scalia was a towering conservative figure, and Hatch a Republican stalwart. Adelson is a more peculiar pick. Other presidents have selected campaign donors (Obama chose Warren Buffett, for example), but seldom has one picked an honoree who is most famous for political giving.

Still, it’s Presley and Ruth who stick out most. First, they are dead. A very small portion of past picks have been posthumous, and when they are, the honorees tend to be either recently deceased (Scalia, Alexander Calder, John Wayne, Count Basie) or underappreciated in their lifetime (Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, who died in 1992 and was honored in 2016; Martin Luther King Jr.; Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner). It can hardly be said that either Elvis or Babe Ruth was denied acclaim in his lifetime. Presley even had his own (in)famous visit to the White House.

One reason Trump might gravitate to the deceased is that living celebrities tend overwhelmingly to oppose him, raising the danger that they would refuse the honor. This year, the Trumps are once again skipping the Kennedy Center Honors gala, usually a staple presidential event, lest they receive a hostile greeting.

But Ruth and Presley also both align with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” philosophy. When the president speaks about returning to halcyon days of the past, he doesn’t name a specific year—both because any particular moment would be subject to criticism and because he’s referring more to a feeling than to a time. That feeling is represented by Elvis and the Babe, who speak to a generalized white nostalgia about a time of green lawns, prosperous business, and larger-than-life heroes.

Presley and Ruth also represent an archetype of almost-but-not-quite-wholesome heroes—Presley had a serious drug problem, and Ruth was a drunken lout—that may appeal to Trump, who revels in trying to be at once caddish and grandiosely great.