“What the Olympic Gold Medal is to athletes, what the Congressional Medal of Honor is to the military, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is to the private United States citizen,” said Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Today, President Bush will give the Presidential Medal of Freedom to an indisputably worthy recipient: Henry Hyde, the former Republican congressman from Illinois.

Hyde spent 32 years in the House of Representatives, retiring only last year. He made his mark in many areas — as a tough-minded leader on foreign affairs and chairman of the Committee on International Relations, as the head prosecutor in the Clinton impeachment case, and as one of the GOP’s most persuasive debaters.