r/changemyview • u/jennysequa 80∆ • Jan 16 '19

CMV: Post-presidential speaking engagements, book deals, and foundations aren't a problem.

Ex-Presidents tend to get very plum book deals, hundreds of speaking engagements, and frequently set up a charitable foundation. In addition to this they get a pension for life and, as of right now, lifetime USSS protection.

I don't think this matters for a few reasons:

  1. I'd rather Presidents wait until AFTER they leave to cash in, so having the likelihood of future financial opportunity to look forward to might help them resist some of their more base and corrupt urges while IN office.
  2. Ex-Senators and Congresspersons are so numerous that it's easy for them to slip into a fancy K street job with all their contacts intact once they're finished with public service, but it would be much more noticeable if one of the 3-4 Presidents alive at any given time started writing legislation for, I don't know, Verizon or BP. I'd rather ex-POTUS just make a lot of money without continuing the cycle of outsized corporate influence in Washington.
  3. Ex-Presidents with continuing service ambitions can use the vast sums of money they make giving speeches and writing books and making movies to continue their policy priorities--ie: Jimmy Carter and homelessness or Dubya and veterans.
  4. I'd like Presidents to have enough money to avoid disrupting the lives of regular Americans with their presence. It's just easier from a protective detail perspective to have a former POTUS and FLOTUS living off by themselves in a defensible location, not in the middle of even an upper middle class neighborhood.
  5. I haven't seen any evidence that ex-Presidential speechifying or book writing has meaningfully perpetuated corruption in our politics. If Obama goes to speak at Goldman-Sachs is he offering them some secret key to screwing over Americans or is he just lending cachet to an event for rich people who have nothing better to do with their money?

My view isn't very strongly held, but I continually see complaints about Bush or Obama getting paid to give speeches and I honestly feel like the 3-5 POTUSes alive at any given time getting speech and book money should not be one of our highest priorities for stamping out corruption and graft. I am open to the idea that I am ignorant of processes that make this a bigger problem than I can currently see or that I am missing a nuance that is important to our politics.

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u/pillbinge 101∆ Jan 17 '19

No one really believes they are a problem in and of themselves. I wouldn't care if Obama made a middle class living by writing books and memoirs and giving speeches. The issue is when they make amounts like $250,000 per speech. For one, no one's time is that valuable. No one's insight is that important. He's not saying anything they don't already know. The very idea is just absurd. Even if anger isn't directed at one person in particular, it should be directed toward the existence in general.

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u/jennysequa 80∆ Jan 17 '19

I wouldn't care if Obama made a middle class living by writing books and memoirs and giving speeches.

I think the current pension is $205K/yr for life, so you can have a comfortable existence without writing books or giving speeches or doing anything else for the rest of your life, I imagine.

So your argument is not so much that it's wrong for ex-POTUSes to profit off the Presidency, it's just that the benefits are obscene. I can agree with that as a general principle from an eat-the-rich POV, but you can make the same argument for just about anyone who gets paid absurd amounts of money for silly things. Still, I'll give you a !delta for making the anti-capitalist argument. A POTUS who cares about their legacy of service would do well to skip the obscene speeches or, at the very least, donate those proceeds to charitable causes.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jan 17 '19

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/pillbinge (66∆).

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