Political awards don't mean anything, just that you have good PR. Hilary Clinton has a Grammy, Barack Obama has a Nobel Peace Prize, and Al Gore has an Oscar. Nate Silver is doing things publicly in statistics but that doesn't mean he's the end-all be-all.
Some of us don't buy into the Kurzweil hype. Frankly, I think he's delusional. But my mother always said that there's a fine line between an idiot and a savant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Medal_of_Technology
It's definitely not a Cracker Jack prize.
He's also racked up a pretty impressive list of Inventor of the Year and Lifetime Achievement awards from more technically astute sources like MIT, Carnegie Mellon, etc.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_kurzweil - under Recognition and awards
I guess the main point I was trying to make is that he's definitely not this dilettante interloper that some of the more off-base commenters are alleging here.