Purely symbolic, as a recognition of her status as America's "ship of state". And of course not always the case, she spent much of her career out of commission in ordinary, slowly rotting at the pier as a receiving ship at times. She was most recently recomissioned, and given her current hull number, in 1941 under FDR. In the past 25 years she has gotten underway and sailed on her own just twice for a combined total of less than 1 hour, she is never going to be used as anything more than a very pretty pier queen who occasionally goes for an evening sail once a decade.

Though it does mean she has an actual crew if active duty sailors and officers. No volunteer docents here, but sailors along with Navy civilians with the Naval History and Heritage Command. The CO billet is a Commander's job same as an Arleigh Burke Destroyer, and enlisted sailors can work with their detailer to try to get orders to her. She also serves as a muster station for local reservists. None of which is true for say, any of the 4 Iowa class battleships that are museum's around the nation. Though there is the nonprofit partner org Constitution Museum that occupies some space in the old Navy Yard to help share the ships story.

The central factor then of course is, this means it is the Navy who pays the bills for her upkeep. Not a private organization or reliant on donations or the Park Service, but written into Congressional appropriations for the Dept of the Navy. Which these can be very expensive, her most recent drydock period lasted 2 years and ran towards 15million dollars! Money that many other museum ships could only dream about as the sad truth is that the market in the US is oversaturated. And as we approach the 100 year mark for some of the WW2 vintage hulls the costs will only go up.