The Highs and Lows of Presidential Signing Ceremonies
History shows that signing ceremonies offer presidents both great risks as well as opportunities
By Tevi Troy
Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill’s Big Beautiful July 4 Signing Ceremony was certainly a memorable event, with key members of Congress and the cabinet in attendance as well as a flyover by fighter and bomber jets. For the president, combining the signing of the bill with Independence Day festivities was meant to telegraph to voters the importance of his most significant legislative achievement to date.
But long before Trump, presidents have seen political opportunities in White House signing ceremonies. At the same time, although such ceremonies can provide great optics, history also shows that they are not without risks.
Workman-Like Affairs
For much of the 19th century, many signing ceremonies took place at the U.S. Capitol—not the White House—and were more workman-like affairs. When both the presidency and Congress used to end at the same time, noon on March 4, outgoing presidents would spend the night of March 3 at the Capitol to be ready to sign bills into law as they passed. In the 1850s, Congress built what is known as the President’s Room as a place for presidents to do business at the Capitol, including signing pieces of legislation. Both Ulysses S. Grant and Chester A. Arthur used the room for this purpose. When the 1933 ratification of the 20th Amendment separated the beginnings of presidential and congressional terms, the President’s Room ceased being a place for last-minute bill signings. Coming at the beginning of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, this move also helped signal a shift to Roosevelt’s more activist presidency.
But even before the 20th Amendment, presidents were not completely unaware of the symbolic power of these events. For instance, presidents have long recognized the importance of the pens used to sign important pieces of legislation. In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt sent Indiana Senator Albert Beveridge a pen used to sign the bill creating the modern Food and Drug Administration, writing to him, “You were the man who first called my attention to the abuses in the packing houses. You were the legislator who drafted the bill which in its substance now appears in the amendment to the agricultural bill.”
FDR was one of the first presidents to make the signing of bills into more of a political ceremony. Yet the elaborate public signing ceremonies that we know today are a relatively recent phenomenon. We can see the development of these events in the contrast between the Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson presidencies. When Ike signed the 1954 St. Lawrence Seaway Bill, he invited multiple dignitaries and used 10 pens for the signing. Newsreel footage of that ceremony shows it as a relatively small White House event. By comparison, when Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the East Room of the White House, he used 75 different pens, giving them as souvenirs to dignitaries who helped along the way, including Senator Everett Dirksen, Vice President Hubert Humphrey and civil rights leader Martin Luther King.
Johnson particularly loved the souvenir-pen shtick. At one Rose Garden signing ceremony, he looked at his choppy, many-penned signature and said, “I hope future historians, contemplating this signature, will remember the circumstances under which it was made.” Because of Johnson’s theatrical and frequent use of White House signing ceremonies, The New York Times’ Robert Semple called Johnson the “champion bill-signer of all time.”
Not every bill passed during Johnson’s time received a signing ceremony. For instance, when he signed what was at the time politically unpopular legislation creating a health warning on cigarette packaging, he did so alone and, as The New York Times speculated, with “the curtains drawn.”
Triumphs and Missteps
Signing ceremonies are not just limited to legislation. Jimmy Carter’s team also liked the optics of these ceremonies for treaties. In 1977, Carter invited every Latin American leader except Cuba’s Fidel Castro to a ceremony for the signing of the treaty returning the Panama Canal to Panama. Eighteen of them came, although Carter had to promise a personal meeting with each one of them to secure their attendance. Also, since the treaty was meant to help rid the U.S. of its colonialist reputation, the president thought it best to have the ceremony at the Pan American Union Building of the Organization of American States rather than the White House.
Carter’s White House had high expectations for the March 26 signing ceremony for the 1979 Camp David Accords peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Carter himself even checked on the preparations, including the creation of the platform on which he, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin would sign the historic document. While watching the platform’s construction, an impressed Carter said to his wife, “Rosalynn, do you remember when we saved for two weeks to buy a sheet of plywood; they’re going through it like tissue paper.” Yet even as Carter was watching the workers in action, there was last-minute drama behind the scenes. Begin declared that he would boycott the ceremony if the agreement called Israel’s capital, Jerusalem, “occupied territory.” The crisis was averted when the parties agreed to state their positions in an exchange of letters, and so one of the most famous of all White House signing ceremonies went ahead.
One Carter signing ceremony that backfired was the June 18, 1979 SALT II arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union. Although an important Cold War milestone, many Americans were rightfully wary of the Soviets. Carter adviser Gerald Rafshoon warned the president that Russian men liked to kiss other males at important events. Carter was dismissive of the warning, saying, “Don’t worry, Jerry, it won’t happen.” He was wrong. Brezhnev hugged and kissed Carter after the signing in front of the cameras, and Ronald Reagan’s campaign deftly deployed these images of the president in the Soviet leader’s embrace against him during the 1980 presidential campaign.
Another misstep at a signing ceremony took place in November of 1991, when George H.W. Bush signed the Civil Rights Act in front of more than 100 guests. Unfortunately, White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, angry with Washington Post coverage of him, used the moment to upbraid Post reporter Ann Devroy, shouting at her, “You’re a liar! Your stories are all lies! Everything you write is a lie!” The incident got far more attention than the actual bill signing, and Sununu announced his resignation a month later.
Signing ceremonies are often the cause of behind-the-scenes wrangling within the White House. In 1990, White House domestic policy aide Roger Porter wanted to have a signing ceremony for the passage of the Clean Air Act, but some in the White House did not like the concessions Porter had made to get the bill through a Democratic-led Congress. White House lawyer John Schmitz joked that “each time [Democratic Senate Leader] George Mitchell smiled at or complimented Porter, it cost the American taxpayers an additional $25 million.” Porter got staff secretary Jim Cicconi to make the case for a signing ceremony in a senior staff meeting but Cicconi got blasted for his efforts by Sununu and Office of Management and Budget head Richard Darman, who used to terrorize staffers for making suggestions they did not like. According to White House aide Charlie Kolb, Cicconi looked to an understandably fearful Porter for help, but none was forthcoming. The White House did eventually hold such a ceremony, but only after Darman and Sununu had sufficiently terrorized those who suggested it.
Bill Clinton reveled in the spectacle of bill signings. In 1993, Clinton—who held 91 bill-signing ceremonies as president—invited the band Soul Asylum for the outdoor signing of the National and Community Service Trust Act. This was a big event, with 50 volunteers helping out and celebrity guests like actress Winona Ryder, baseball player Dave Winfield and rapper LL Cool J in attendance. Melinda Hudson, a PR consultant who assisted in planning the event, warned the volunteers to literally watch their gum, saying, “Don’t spit it on the White House lawn!” Like Hudson, the band was also paying attention to the White House lawn. When Soul Asylum’s lead singer, Dave Pirner, was asked what he talked about with Clinton, he responded: “The lawn. I thought it needed to be mowed.”
Barack Obama had 60 bill-signing ceremonies as president, but half of them took place in his first two years in office, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. The most prominent of those ceremonies was for the passage of the Affordable Care Act, on March 23, 2010. This East Room ceremony was carefully planned, with Obama using 22 pens for the occasion, but it is best known not for the event’s pomp but for an unplanned moment when then Vice President Joe Biden whispered in Obama’s ear, but loud enough for the microphones to pick up, “This is a big f***ing deal.”
When Biden became president a decade later, he rarely had public signing ceremonies. In fact, when he signed the Social Security Fairness Act in January of 2025, after the 2024 election, it was his first such ceremony in two years. The long break between ceremonies, coupled with revelations about Biden’s infirmity, raised questions about whether the infrequency of the ceremonies was intended to keep him from members of Congress and others who might ask questions about his mental acuity.
As for Trump, the Big Beautiful Ceremony was far from his only notable ceremony. One thinks of his sharpie-tossing executive order signing extravaganza at the Capital One Arena on the day of his second inauguration, or the Abraham Accords signing on the White House lawn during his first term. Given the difficulties of getting nonreconciliation legislation through Congress, his future opportunities may be limited, but it’s a safe bet that he will try to make the most of whatever signing ceremonies do come his way.
Tevi Troy is a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute, a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center and a former senior White House aide. He is the author of five books on the presidency including, most recently, “The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry.”