The Post on the Paid-Speaking Circuit

So, okay, okay, I need to wrap up this three part story that began with my two previous posts, Obama Drunk the Speaking Fees Kool-Aid and Obama Speaking Fees Redux. And please keep in mind that this isn't just about the question of whether ex-presidents should get paid for giving speeches, and whether some of the venues and audiences might be questionable. No, much more importantly, this is about various appearances of my double re-quoted quote, itself based on previous quotes and re-quotes.

So, on the same day that that double re-quote appeared online, April 25th, I was contacted by a reporter from the Washington Post, Krissah Thompson, and she did a phone interview with me on this subject. The article she wrote on the topic was published in the April 27th issue of the paper, as the lead article at the top of Section C:

And here's a closer look, but don't worry, I'll also post the text in easy to read form:

And of course you can also read the article, entitled The Obamas Face The Paid-Speaking Circuit—And All the Questions That Come With It, over on the Post's site, just by clicking on the old link. But should you decide to stick around, here's how the piece opens:

When Barack and Michelle Obama left the White House, they both spoke longingly of a break from life in the public eye. But following a months-long vacation, they have started to tap into the lucrative paid-speaking circuit that has enriched so many other former presidents and first ladies—with the potential to quickly net millions of dollars.

On Thursday, both made their first appearances as speakers-for-hire.

“Hi, everybody, it’s good to get out of the house,” said Michelle Obama, visibly relaxed, as she sat for a wide-ranging—but free of partisan politics—question-and-answer session before the American Institute of Architecture’s annual conference. Her husband, meanwhile, joined historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in New York for a closed-door address to employees of the A&E cable network.

It was not divulged how much they were paid for these first appearances. But the former president will collect $400,000 for a September speech to a health-care conference sponsored by investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, Fox Business reported this week.

And after all, speaking at an American Institute of Architecture conference and to the A&E channel is not terribly controversial, but getting a big payoff from Wall Street investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald is another story altogether.

As newly minted high-dollar speakers, the Obamas follow a well-worn path from the White House—but one that poses risks to a personal and political brand rooted in their middle-class backgrounds.

Aides to the Obamas would not comment on how much they are charging for other private speaking engagements, but they defended the speaking schedule and pointed out that the president’s first public meeting was a conversation with college students in Chicago earlier this week.

“President Obama will deliver speeches from time to time. Some of those speeches will be paid, some will be unpaid, and regardless of venue or sponsor, President Obama will be true to his values, his vision and his record,” his senior adviser, Eric Schultz, said in a statement issued after the Cantor Fitzgerald speech drew a wave of criticism—including a New York Post headline that dubbed Obama “Wall Street’s new fat cat.”

The New York Post being a conservative paper, this shows how Obama's choice could be seen as playing into the right wing's hands, while on the left, critics would note the fact that as president, Obama failed to prosecute any of the banking executives whose greed led to the great recession that began in 2008, and that he spent his entire two terms trying to deal with.

But let's get back to the article, which provides a defense of Obama both in arguing that he's entitled to make some money, and that there's plenty of precedent for presidents doing so:

Schultz argued that Obama’s appearance at the health-care conference made sense: “As a president who successfully passed health insurance reform, it’s an issue of great importance to him.” As for a six-figure check signed by an investment bank, “I’d just point out that in 2008, Barack Obama raised more money from Wall Street than any candidate in history—and still went on to successfully pass and implement the toughest reforms on Wall Street since FDR.”

Other former first couples have been challenged on their paid speeches, which began in earnest when former president Gerald R. Ford hit the lecture circuit: He needed to make a living somehow, he said. Former president Ronald Reagan was roundly criticized when he followed suit, taking heat for accepting $2 million for two speeches in Japan.

So now it's time to hear from yours truly, and my comment refers to Reagan's speeches in Japan, not Obama, in case that's not clear:

“He was seen as a gung-ho patriotic American, and then the first thing he does is go speak to another country that was, in a sense, an economic rival,” said Lance Strate, a professor of communication at Fordham University. “They are entitled to make money, and nobody really bats an eyelash over the book deals they might get. But there’s something about speaking fees because it involves personal presence. As a former president, you’re still representing the country.”

So there I go again, and once again, let me emphasize the point about personal presence, and how that is much more significant than the specific speech itself, personal presence being on the level of relationship or medium, as opposed to content, in media ecological terms.

But anyway, I do get a little more in later, but at this point it's, and now this:

Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who was chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, said that “as private citizens [the Obamas] are pretty much free to give speeches in their personal capacity,” but at a potential cost to their popularity and future political influence.

And let me interject here that this is in keeping with some of the balance theories of attitude change, which suggest, based on behavioral research, that when you have a source about whom folks have generally positive attitudes towards, and that source promotes something, a product, cause, or person, about whom folks have a negative or neutral attitude towards, the source will tend to succeed in improving their attitude towards whatever it is the source is promoting, which is the whole point of doing it, and what you would expect. But this comes at a cost, because doing so will reduce the positive attitude folks have towards the source, often as a delayed reaction, the effect being a kind of transfer of good will and feelings (or in effect selling a bit of the person's positive image).

So, anyway, back to the article now, as Thompson continues to refer to Painter:

His old boss did it, too. According to Robert Draper’s book “Dead Certain,” Bush said the lecture circuit would “replenish the ol’ coffers.” He was reportedly paid between $100,000 and $175,000 for each appearance.

Bill and Hillary Clinton similarly came under heavy criticism for their private speeches, which earned them more than $25 million for delivering 104 speeches over 15 months, and became an issue in her presidential campaigns.

“It’s not a question of whether it’s legal,” Painter said. “It’s a question of whether someone in a political environment can make an argument that it was unethical.”

And the consequences go beyond attitudes folks hold in regard to the former president and first lady:

Though neither of the Obamas seem to want to run for political office in the future, their calculations are complicated by the tenuous state of the Democratic Party, said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University.

“In a party that doesn’t really have especially captivating personalities right now, he remains a figure­head,” Zelizer said. “If he goes down the road of speaking for a lot of money, that has the potential to hurt the party.”

Julian is absolutely right on this point, and as I've said, it also makes it harder for Democrats to take the high moral ground in criticizing Republicans, although the Republicans have sunk so low over the past year that anything the Democrats do right now looks like up to most of us.

So, what now? Can there really be such a thing as a balance in respect to this sort of thing?

Obama seems to be attempting a balance between community-minded appearances and lucrative ones. His first paid event followed a public one Monday at the University of Chicago on civic engagement—typical, his spokesman said, of the topics he wants to discuss in the future.

“He wants to get together with young people and other community leaders who are front of mind to him and get ideas from them on how to create solutions for their communities and also partnering with other organizations that are making it a priority to bring resources to communities in need,” said his press secretary, Kevin Lewis.

Up next: a speech next month in Boston, where he will receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, and trips to Berlin to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italy for the Global Food Innovation Summit.

As for Michelle Obama, she will speak next month at the Partnership for a Healthier America, which supported her White House anti-obesity initiatives, and join MTV for a “College Signing Day” encouraging high school students to pursue higher education.

Both Obamas are represented on the speaking circuit by the Harry Walker Agency, which also reps Richard B. Cheney, Al Gore and former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan.

So, anyway, I did get another comment included in the article, this one in reference to Michelle Obama, whose choices I believe were much more prudent than her husband's:

Strate said Michelle Obama’s first appearance seemed like a shrewd choice. Architecture “is not terribly controversial. It is something that has both a practical and an artistic element to it,” he said.

By the way, I believe that over across the Atlantic, in Great Britain, Prince Charles made architecture one of this main interests many years ago. Of course, there are some significant differences in motivation:

Onstage in Orlando, the former first lady said she chose the AIA gathering in part because of her early-career work in economic development for the city of Chicago.

“I got to know how important architects are in the lifeblood and beauty of any city, particularly a city like Chicago. . . . So [this] seemed like a good place to get started,” she said. “It’s like coming almost full circle for me.”

She spoke with authority about her experience as a lawyer and executive—topics she often seemed reluctant to address in her husband’s administration. She also seemed to be keeping up with the political news, making indirect comments, in a discussion of the challenges facing cities, that seemed to address President Trump’s proposal for overhauling the nation’s tax code.

“We have to invest,” she said, “which means we have to pay taxes.”

In another oblique reference, she shared a story about her emotional final day at the White House. Her daughters were in tears as they said goodbye to the staff, and she felt herself choke up, too — but she resolved to keep her emotions hidden before the Inauguration Day cameras.

“I didn’t want to have tears in my eyes because people would swear I was crying because of the new president,” she said, as the crowd laughed.

And who could blame her? Anyway, as I indicated, the article began on the front page of section C, and it continued on the third page:

And that's how the article ends, not with a bang, but with a bit of laughter. As I mentioned earlier, my interview with Thompson, who by the way was delightful to talk to, was by way of a telephone conversation (remember those?), so I don't have a record of all that I said, but I think you've got the main talking points here, and in my previous posts on the subject. 

And in bringing my 3-part series to a close, let me end by noting that, much like the web and hypertext more generally, I think you can see how following this trail of quotes, re-quotes, and new quotes represents a pattern of networked connections, which is the shape of much of our interactions, especially in the electronic media environment.



 

Obama Speaking Fees Redux

So, to follow up on my last post, Obama Drunk the Speaking Fees Kool-Aid, which was on my quote that keeps on re-quoting, about a day or so after my double re-quoted quote appeared, it made another appearance, this time on Romper. The piece, by Kenza Moller, isn't dated, so I'm not sure if it appeared on the same day as the others, April 25th, or the next day, April 26th, or on the day it came to my attention, April 27th, but in any event, the title of the article is Why Is Obama Getting Paid For His Speeches? It's Common Practice For Former Presidents.

Okay now, so let's get to it. Here's how the article begins:

President Barack Obama is back from his post-administration vacation visits to Hawaii and French Polynesia, and he's already been busy. He spoke at the University of Chicago on Monday, and he's headed to an awards ceremony in Boston next, followed by a string of private paid speeches both at home and abroad. The former president's new—and reportedly impressive—payroll for these speeches has already drawn criticism from some, and several people are asking why Obama is now getting paid for his speeches.

According to Fox, one of Obama's upcoming speeches, which will reportedly take place at a Wall Street conference put on by Cantor Fitzgerald LP, will earn him a reported $400,000—which is roughly the amount that he would make in an entire year as president. Obama is also intending to give paid speeches in both Europe and the United States, and all of those talks are likely to earn him a pretty penny.

Now, you may remember from my last post that I don't believe that Obama's decision to take a big payday from this major Wall Street firm was the best move, given all that is happening with his successor, and that it tarnishes Obama's own image, which for some is near saintly. So, I give Moller credit for bringing up the fact that Obama's choice is open to criticism:

Some people criticize the idea of former presidents earning money for speaking engagements after vacating the White House, while others see it as their own personal business. According to Politico, Harry Truman once said he had "a very strong feeling about any man, who has the honor of being an occupant of the White House in the greatest job in the history of the world, who would exploit that situation in any way, shape or form."

Still, all in all, Moller takes the same position as Shaw did in my last post, excusing Obama by saying that others have done it before him (which, to my mind, is no excuse at all):

Both Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, however, have responded to questions about their speech circuits with a more laissez-faire—and practical—approach, with each citing their needs to "make a living" and "pay the bills." So why not turn their global fame into a speaking gig? As private citizens who are no longer on the presidential payroll (except for receiving an annual pension), it's really their own prerogative.

Obama's new role as a funded speaker is also hardly new territory for anyone who has made waves in politics, either: Obama joins both George H.W. and George W. Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and others in collecting fees for speeches. And according to Fortune, past presidents' inflated prices make perfect sense, economically, since they bring a level of influence to the event that would otherwise be difficult to achieve.

Okay now, brace yourself, here it comes:

"The speech is kind of secondary to ... just being able to have a big name at your event," Lance Strate, a communications professor at Fordham University, told Fortune in 2015. "It might get reported on some form of TV or cable news, which further adds to the prestige and the publicity of the event."

So, there I go again. And now, for the concluding paragraph, and while I don't quite agree with Moller's conclusion, at least there's some acknowledgement that there is cause for criticism regarding this practice:

Just like other former presidents have, Obama is likely to keep drawing criticism for charging for his speeches. However, now that he's no longer tied to politics, there's really no reason he shouldn't be using his private time and expertise in order to craft a new career as a public speaker.

Yes, well, he can craft a new career while showing some discretion and discrimination about who he accepts speaking fees from. Anyway, that my view on what is, after all, a minor matter in the grand scheme of things. And you might think that the story of all this ends here, but not quite, there's still room for one more post, a very significant post indeed, coming up next time!

4 Points on the Meaning of the Donald Trump Candidacy

So much attention on the part of the news media is being devoted to Donald Trump running for president that I can't resist adding some comments on the meaning of Trump's candidacy, on Trump as a pseudo-candidate, on Trump as a celebrity candidate, on Trump representing the business sector, and on Trump as a leader.

1. Trump is a pseudo-candidate. Much of the coverage about his candidacy amounts to discussion about whether he should be taken seriously or not. The opinion polls showing him leading the pack of contenders for the Republican nomination are evidence that he is a legitimate contender. But his behavior falls outside of the norm of political rhetoric, adding to the fact that his past experience does not fit the profile of most major party candidates.

While news media are covering Trump as a controversial candidate, and how some are arguing that he is not fit to be president, most are not taking the opportunity to raise the more interesting question of what are the requirements to becoming president? Part of the problem is that we have the American cultural myth that there are no requirements, that anyone can grow up to be president, so it goes against that deeply held and cherished belief to suggest that someone who is born a citizen and is not a convicted felon cannot be president. No one wants to say that American presidents tend to come from a relatively small segment of the population, to have a relatively narrow set of qualifications based on education (Ivy League for the most part in recent decades), socioeconomic background (often affluent, at least professionals occupying the upper middle class). and experience (significant records of government service).

And when it comes to the coverage, while there is acknowledgement that Trump's candidacy is fueled by his personal fortune, implying that anyone with the means can effectively "buy" his way into the race, this tends to obscure the fact that much of the task of running for president is about fundraising, that all of the candidates have to be or quickly become resource rich in order to mount an effective campaign. Which leads to the inverse conclusion, that people without the means or connections, poor people, working class people, even most middle class people, can never become president. Of course, everyone knows this, but it is never actually stated in an overt manner, because that would pop the bubble, ruin the illusion.

But even here, there is the sense that Trump's use of personal wealth to fund his campaign places him outside of the political norm. It's not unheard of, but it is another way in which he is non-traditional candidate.

Of course, the main thing is that he speaks off the cuff, and that his comments, about immigration, Mexico, John McCain, Obama's birth status, etc., are not politic. And there is an obvious popular appeal to this, in contrast to most candidates being increasingly more unwilling to take a stand on anything because it will be shared throughout our vast electronic media environment, to all of the conflicting constituencies that the candidates are vying for support from. In the face of the bland way of talking that results from all this, an uncandidate who speaks his mind and is not afraid of offending others comes across as authentic where all the others seem phoney. That this contributes to Trump's appeal is clear enough, but again what often goes unsaid is that this also implies is that if you are authentic, you can never be president. That is perhaps the greatest threat posed by Trump's candidacy to traditional politicians.

The solution, of course, is a theatrical one. Following Erving Goffman, we can understand that authenticity is a performance, a way of playing a role, and candidates need to play the part of being authentic while not actually being authentic, just as actors need to convince you that they are the character they're portraying, not an actor playing a part. The performance needs to be transparent, so the audience forgets that it is a performance. And let's be clear, sometimes the performance of authenticity may not be a lie; in fact, it works best if most of the time the performance is felt to be real and true by the actor. Most politicians, not having experience on the stage or screen, have some trouble with their projection of a sense of authenticity when performing their roles. Of course, Ronald Reagan, who was an actor before he became a politician was the master at creating an image of authenticity, and thereby establishing credibility, and likeability, with his audience.

Despite the threat that Trump's image of authenticity poses, ultimately he will be seen as a pseudo-candidate. The message that he is not to be taken seriously, or that he is not fit to be president, is being broadcast fairly consistently by the news media, comedians and talk show hosts, and by many of his Republican rivals. And while this is not the intent of the journalists and media professionals at least, dismissing Trump serves to reinforce the legitimacy of all of the other candidates.

I want to emphasize this point: By presenting Trump as a pseudo-candidate, news media outlets are telling us that all of the other candidates are not pseudo-candidates. They are telling us that they are, in fact, real candidates. That they are, in fact, authentic.

This serves to disguise what media ecology scholar Jacques Ellul referred to as the political illusion, the illusion that politics in a technological society is not reduced to decisions largely made by technical experts on the basis of efficiency, rather than any other human value.

.......

Postmodernist Jean Baudrillard, a media ecologist in his own right, once argued that the function of Disneyland, an an obvious simulation of reality, was to give us the impression that everything else is real, is not a simulation as well. That is, it gives us the impression that our malls, highways, cities, buildings, homes, as well as our parks and farms, are not the product of human technological intervention, that we have not radically reshaped the environment that we live in. That it is not, in that sense, an artificially manufactured, pseudo-environment.

By the same token, Trump as a pseudo-candidate reinforces the view that the other candidates, who all behave in the narrow way that a candidate is supposed to behave, and who all represent a narrow segment of the population, all are real, actual, authentic, legitimate candidates that ought to be taken seriously. Trump is the obvious simulation of the political process that hides the fact that it is all a simulation of a true democracy.

I don't mean to say that it makes no difference whatsoever who we elect as president. It does make a difference. Just maybe not anywhere near as much difference as we are led to believe. And just that the difference it makes has less to do with the candidates themselves, and more to do with the specific technical experts they call upon to guide them.

2. Trump is a celebrity candidate. In referring to Trump as a pseudo-candidate, I have been following media ecology scholar Daniel Boorstin's lead. Boorstin coined the term pseudo-event to refer to artificially manufactured events designed simply to be reported by the mass media, publicity stunts, interviews, press conferences, press releases, news leaks, etc. And in a groundbreaking discussion of heroes and celebrities, he referred to the celebrity as a human pseudo-event.

It follows that Trump is a celebrity, and is certainly not the first to capitalize on star power in the pursuit of political office, the most obvious example being Reagan. And it is perhaps not surprising, given the prominence of the entertainment industry in California, that that state would give us Reagan and more recently Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor, but how to explain Minnesota where former professional wrestler and movie actor Jesse Ventura served a term as governor, and comedian Al Franken is currently serving his second term as United States Senator? Except to understand that celebrity politics is a national, indeed an international phenomenon.

Much has been made of the fact that Trump has been host of the reality television program The Apprentice for over a decade, and its variation (quite fitting in this context) known as The Celebrity Apprentice. His famous last words to contestants, "you're fired!" is taken as evidence of his leadership ability, the efficiency of the executive, unconstrained by sentimentality, or even humanity.

But on the subject of celebrity, it is worth noting that, while he has enjoyed considerable success in business, as a real estate developer, Trump is a human pseudo-event in the sense that he is not the most successful executive or entrepreneur in this area, not at all. Long before he was tapped to host a TV series, going back to the 80s and the Reagan years, he was a master at self-promotion, and so gained much higher visibility than many others whose records of achievement in business, in real estate, in hotels and casinos, in any of the areas he was involved in, far exceeded his own. He is the product of publicity, not profits.

And with the barriers that once existed between sectors of society dissolving on account of the electronic media, where everything is just an image, a performance, and a chunk of data, Trump was able to move between worlds, from private enterprise to the world of celebrity, and so to television entertainment, and from there into politics. Just another example of what Neil Postman referred to as amusing ourselves to death. A process that has exploded in the decades that followed Postman's publication, which I address in my own work.

 ......

3. Trump means business. Trump is hardly the first individual to run for president based on his experience in the private sector, as a corporate executive, rather than as a

politician. Back in May, Carly Fiorina made it official that she was seeking the Republican nomination, her background being a former executive at AT&T and Lucent, and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, before being forced to resign.

In 2012, Herman Cain was one of the Republican candidates, running on his experience as a Vice-President at Pillsbury, an executive at Burger King, and CEO of Godfather's Pizza. Mitt Romney won the nomination, and while he served one term as governor of Massachusetts, he also

emphasized his experience as an executive and CEO of Bain & Co. management consultants and the Bain Capital private equity investment firm.

 Going back a little further, in 1992 Ross Perot ran as an independent candidate, as a billionaire entrepreneur with long experience in the tech sector, and gained enough support in the polls to be included in the televised debates along with

incumbent Republican president George H. W. Bush and Democratic challenger Bill Clinton. He drew almost 19% of the popular vote in the general election, much of which might have otherwise gone to Bush, which insured Clinton's victory. Perot ran again in 1996 under the banner of the Reform Party, which he founded, but only drew 8% of the popular vote that time, still a very significant showing.

From all this, you might conclude that business-based candidates are not serious contenders for the presidency, and that does seem to be the case, sort of. But note that our previous two-term president, George W. Bush. while  campaigning based on his service as Governor of Texas, also included quite a bit of private sector experience on his resume, working in the oil industry, both as an executive and

an entrepreneur, and as managing general partner of the Texas Rangers baseball team for five years. Moreover, he was the first president of the United States to hold an MBA degree (from the Harvard Business School). Opinions on his actual business acumen and how well it served him as a political leader vary considerably, as you might imagine.

4. Trump is a leader. Trump's rationale for why he is qualified to be president, a rationale shared by all who run on their experience in business rather than politics, is that politicians are often not efficient administrators, and that the private sector is a better training ground for leadership than the public sector—note, in this regard, that for a long time, it was military service that was seen as the best preparation for civic leadership, but the aftermath of the Vietnam War put an end to that, and consider the despicable treatment of John Kerry in 2004 (running against George W. Bush who evaded serving in Vietnam by enlisting in the Texas National Guard, and through family connections avoided a dishonorable discharge after refusing to take a required medical examination, presumably due to drug use), not to mention the recent conflict between Trump and John McCain over McCain's experience as a POW and status as a war hero.

There is an analogy at work here, that government is an organization like any other organization, and therefore the skills and talents needed to run one organization can be transferred to another. Following this logic, the CEO of a soda company can become the CEO of a computer company (a move that brought Apple to the brink of bankruptcy in the 80s), that it's all about technique, method, not material. And even if this would be true for the private sector, does it translate to the public sector. Is the simile that government is like a business, or worse yet the metaphor that government is a business, put in a milder way that it ought to be run like a business, valid?

Calvin Coolidge is often misquoted as saying, "the business of America is business," the actual quote being, "the chief business of the American people is business," but either way, he did not say that the American government is a business or should be one. Does government manufacture a product? Does government sell products or services to consumers? Are the people customers of the government, and consumers of its products and services? Is the government itself something to be bought and sold? Does the government have an owner or owners? Are there shareholders, with some having more than others, maybe even some being majority stockholders? Knowing the kinds of answers that many would give to these questions, it might make sense to substitute "should" for "does" because my point is not to argue about the reality of socioeconomic and political inequality, but rather about how we think about the concept of government.

The argument for approaching government as if it were a business, and the presidency as if it were being the CEO of a corporation, is that the private sector is more efficient than the public, because any given business operates within an external environment of free enterprise, and therefore faces Darwinian pressures of competition, survival of the fittest and all that, along with the financial pressure to maximize profits for shareholders, which requires businesses to operate in as lean and mean a manner as possible. Now, holding aside the fact that businesses often are successful in squelching competition, and are not always so wonderfully efficient, the argument itself is based on the technical criteria of efficiency, which media ecology scholars such as Ellul and Postman have argued is inhuman, anti-human, hostile to any human value. 

..................

Is government all about efficiency? Maybe, if we're talking about fascism, Nazism, totalitarianism. Not if we're talking about citizens participating in democratic self-governance. Not if we're talking about preserving human rights, human dignity, and nurturing human potential. Not if we're talking about doing what is right and providing for what is good, for individuals and groups, communities and the people as a whole. Not even if we're talking about what Trump called the art of the deal, the ability to negotiate with individuals who do not share the same views or goals, and to be diplomatic. The old-fashioned words, statesman and statesmanship, and apologies for the sexist language, refer to qualities entirely different from that of a sharp business executive.

We use the same word, leader, to refer to heads of state and heads of corporations, and the officers who devise battle plans and the officers who actually lead soldiers into battle, and community organizers, and clergy, and school administrators, and the list goes on and on. And the case can be made for studying leadership as a general concept, but ultimately, there are many different types of leaders for many different types of situations, and what makes for a good leader is always dependent on the context. Different contexts are differences that make a difference. They are differences that can make all the difference in the world.

A Fortune in Speakers' Fees

So, here we go again. In my recent post, Of Fees, Futility, and Mike Huckabee, I related how a quote of mine regarding the huge speakers' fees given to politicians and other celebrities was included in an article entitled, The Real Reason Mike Huckabee Keeps Running for President, published in The Daily Dot back on May 6th. And how that quote was taken from a longer quote used in an article entitled Talk Is Not Cheap: Why Do Ex-Politicians Earn Huge Money From Making Speeches?, published in the International Business Times back on Decemeber 18, 2003, and immortalized in my blog post of February 23rd, 2014, Giant Speaking Fees-Fi-Fo-Fum.

Phew! Well now, last month, Fortune magazine ran a piece on this topic, entitled Speech Inflation: Why Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Others Get Massive Speaking Fees, posted on their website on June 11th. The author of the article is Ben Geier, and it has a highlighted blurb at the start that goes like this:

Long after they step away from the limelight, ex-politicians can make a mint off of speaking in public. You can blame the rise of speakers bureaus for some of this.

As you might gather from this, the emphasis in this article is a bit a different, and, oh yeah, you can go click on the title and read it over there, or stick around and read it here. It starts off like this:

In just under two years, President Obama will be out of office, leaving the White House and giving way for another politician to start taking flak. What, pray tell, will he do with all that free time? If his predecessors offer any clue, he won’t do much, but he’ll get paid a lot for it.

Last week, Politico reported that former President George W. Bush makes between $100,000 and $175,000 for every speech he gives and that he has given at least 200 speeches since leaving office in 2009. A bit of simple math translates that activity into more than $30 million for the former president in speech fees alone. Compare that to the relatively paltry $400,000 a president makes a year while in office, and you can see why presidents look forward to their retirement.

Now, Geier provides some historical context, and it begins with someone you might consider an unlikely individual, and for that matter, an unlikely president:

Paying ex-presidents to give speeches really took off with Gerald Ford, Politico notes—which makes sense, since Ford didn’t ever really plan to run for president and likely figured he would stay in the House much longer than he did. Ford took umbrage when he was criticized for making money off of his former job, saying that as a private citizen he could leverage his past however he pleased.

Not long after Ford started hitting the lecture circuit, the Washington Speakers Bureau—home to many high-powered speakers, including George W. Bush and his wife Laura—was founded in 1979. These agencies have played a major role in the skyrocketing fees that high-powered speakers now command.

Now for the part you've all been waiting for, the point where I get to weigh in on the topic. And here it comes:

“Whenever you have a middleman, that adds to the cost,” said Lance Strate, a communications professor at Fordham University. The desire among agencies to maximize fees, and the added ability to negotiate that comes with having professional representation, means organizations are more likely to see speaking fees grow. Plus, the agency system simply provides more access to influential figures like ex-presidents, meaning more groups are able to get the power elites they want, if they are willing to pay the price.

I should add that, while I have done a fair amount of public speaking, and have had some interaction with these agencies, I have not signed up with one, and others that I know who have done so have expressed mixed feelings about it all. But then again, we're talking about academics and intellectuals here, not politicians and entertainers.

Anyway, let's get back to the article:

But why exactly are organizations willing to pay so much for an hour of a former politician’s time? It isn’t for the content, that’s for sure. Generally, speakers and those who hire them are mum on just how much money gets handed over for these engagements—which, by the way, aren’t usually the most thought-provoking or newsworthy speeches. (Politico notes that in one speech to a bowling industry group, Bush let loose the earthshaking bon mot that “bowling is fun.”)

And now back to me for the (obvious) answer to the question of why they get paid the big bucks for banal banter:

“The speech is kind of secondary to … just being able to have a big name at your event,” Strate said. “It might get reported on some form of TV or cable news, which further adds to the prestige and the publicity of the event.”And even if it doesn’t end up on the evening news, almost every conference will put their speeches on YouTube, where there is always a chance it will go viral.

And the article ends with some figures Geier or someone at Fortune figured out, and their implications for the current crop of presidential hopefuls:

Though speakers fees are often kept confidential, we do have a few estimates of what famous ex-politicians make:

• Bill Clinton supposedly made around $225,000 for a gig last February.

• Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and one-time Republican presidential hopeful, is said to have pulled up to $270,000 for a speech. 

• Sarah Palin, former Alaska Governor, former Republican vice-presidential candidate, and all-time cable news and tabloid fixture—is said to have made $115,000 for a speech in 2011.

These are just the big guns. Even the fringiest of also-rans—think Howard Dean and Herman Cain—have big-time speakers agents and can pull in serious coin for giving a fluffy 45-minute talk. Given that most of the declared 2016 candidates on both sides of the aisle have a fairly slim chance of becoming president, perhaps financial incentives, rather than the pull of public service, has some impact on just how many people run for high office.

This echoes the point made in the article I was quoted in the month before, The Real Reason Mike Huckabee Keeps Running for President. 

By the way, in this instance, Geier interviewed me by phone, so I don't have a record of all of my comments to share (and it also accounts for the "kind of" bit in my second quote in the article). And our conversation took place on the same day this piece was posted online, June 11th, which is pretty remarkable, at least from an old school point of view. 

At the time, I was in Denver, at the annual meeting of the Media Ecology Association, so I had to sneak off and find a quiet corner for the phone call. Of course that's the kind of speaking we don't get paid for, but I suppose you might say that's a fee-bull excuse...

 

Of Fees, Futility, and Mike Huckabee

So, this one requires a little review. 

On December 18, 2013, an article entitled Talk Is Not Cheap: Why Do Ex-Politicians Earn Huge Money From Making Speeches? was published in the International Business Times, said article including some quotes from your humble servant, yours truly. I shared the article, accompanied by some discussion and analysis, in a post entitled, Giant Speaking Fees-Fi-Fo-Fum, back on February 23rd of 2014.

I thought that was the end of it. Wrong again!

Out of the quotes in that published article, which were taken from a larger set of quotes I had provided to the reporter, a single quote was recently re-quoted (is that anything like re-gifting?) in an article published by the Daily Dot. And in case you're not familiar with this outlet (and I have to admit that I was not myself before now), here is how they describe themselves:

The Daily Dot is the ultimate destination for original reporting about Internet life. We recognize Web users are deeply passionate about their communities and offer them stories that highlight the members of those communities. Our writing is definitive, comprehensive, and pulls from the best traditions of journalism. It is coverage that, uniquely, is not just on the web, but of the web.

So, the particular article in question was published on May 6th of this year, written by Matt Rozsa, and entitled, The Real Reason Mike Huckabee Keeps Running for President. If you want to click on the link and take a look at the article over on the Daily Dot site, please be my guest. I'll provide you with most of here, minus the links and added material, so if you want to follow up, again, go check it out.

So, Rozsa starts it off like this:

Shortly after Mike Huckabee ended his campaign for president in 2008, he began another career—this time as the host of his very own show on Fox News. If you want to understand Huckabee’s reason for making a recent entry into the 2016 race, you must start by recognizing that being an Also Ran can be very, very profitable.

After all, Huckabee’s chances of actually winning are quite slim. “Mr. Huckabee would seem to face greater obstacles than during his first presidential campaign, when he battled only a couple of rivals for the party’s conservative base,” writes Trip Gabriel of the New York Times. “Now half a dozen or more declared and likely candidates appeal to social conservatives, and Mr. Huckabee’s party has moved further rightward.”

If his vulnerabilities among the GOP’s conservative base weren’t damning enough, he is also damaged by his own checkered history when it comes to espousing ideas that are (to put it generously) controversial:

At this point, Rozsa provides several tweets dealing with Huckabee's offensive remarks make in the past, which you can view over there, I won't bother with them here, let's just get on with the point of the article:

These tweets demonstrate that the Internet is very much aware of Huckabee’s past views on gay rights, such as quarantining AIDS victims and supporting legislation permitting discrimination against gay people, as well as his paranoid Christian agenda in general. (Remember that time he claimed the American government was trying to criminalize Christianity?) Although presidential nominations are snagged by appealing to one’s party base, general elections are won by winning over the center, and considering that the American center opposes the injection of religion into politics, Huckabee’s very political brand guarantees his own unelectability.

Naturally, one must wonder: Could Huckabee really be deluded about his own chances of winning? If not, what possible reason could he have to enter the campaign?

“Huckabee is one of a number of people who have managed to make a career out of staging one long, endless, futile presidential run,” explains Drew Magary of GQ. “If you have enough money, a few rich benefactors, and a handful of bafflingly stubborn constituents, you can usually cobble together a campaign that is doomed to fail, but deliberately so.”

Now, here's where we get to the connection to the earlier article regarding speaking fees:

Politicians from both parties indulge in this practice. Rudy Giuliani earned more than $9.2 million in speakers fees in the year before his 2008 presidential campaign, while Hillary Clinton has been to known to accept as much as $200,000 for individual speaking engagements since her tenure as Secretary of State came to a close.

Other pricey Also Rans include Al Gore, whose agency requires him to be compensated “$100,000, plus travel, hotel, security, and per diem expenses”; Mitt Romney, who has averaged between $40,000 and $60,000 per appearance since his unsuccessful 2012 campaign; and Howard Dean, who has been paid $20,000 for speeches as short as 10 minutes in duration.

Of course, the original article on speaking fees was as much if not more so about the winners, like Bill Clinton, as it was about losers like Gore and Huckabee. And this article, on the other hand, is not limited to the topic of speaking fees alone:

Nor is it merely speaking that can rake in the cash for an erstwhile presidential contender. A study by the University of Minnesota’s Eric Ostermeier determined that Sarah Palin—who voters with good memories may recall toyed with a presidential bid in 2012 before being snapped up by Fox News—earned $3 million during her three years as a commentator there, averaging out to $15.85 per word.

Though not earning nearly as much as Palin, many political observers theorized that Huckabee decided against running for president in 2012 because he’d have to give up the $500,000 annual salary from his show.

So now, let's get to my own little quote, or re-quote, in this article:

Dr. Lance Strate, a professor of communication and media studies and associate chair for graduate studies at Fordham University, argues that former presidential candidates can successfully demand egregious sums of money because they have star power. Strate told the International Business Times, “For some, there is the basic interest in being associated with a celebrity, the prestige that comes with the presence and participation of a famous and influential individual.”

And there you have it. Now it's on to bigger and better things:

The digital age has only exacerbated this trend. “Throughout modern campaign history successful candidates have tended to outpace their competitors in understanding changing communications,” explained a 2012 Pew Research Center study on Web and social media use during that year’s presidential election. This ranged “from Franklin Roosevelt’s use of radio, to John F. Kennedy’s embrace of television, to Ronald Reagan’s recognition of the potential for arranging the look and feel of campaign events in the age of satellites and video tape.”

Whereas previous technological advances merely extended the reach of a candidate’s message, however, the Internet allows them to remain in the public eye as long as they can generate headlines on Twitter. Candidates who are able to flourish in this climate may not have demonstrated an ability to effectively serve in public office, but they certainly prove something else entirely—namely, that they are marketable commodities.

Actually, there are no headlines on Twitter, but as long as you are a trending item, or at least a popular subject, sure that would be true. But celebrities do not live by Twitter alone, and the bottom line is that there are many platforms that can create and maintain visibility, and many ways that fame can remain even after the individual is no longer with us. YouTube, for example, is a prime example, in this regard.

And as for running for president as a ploy to gain greater fame, well I imagine that the name Donald Trump comes to mind for you as well as for me. Anyway, back to Rozsa:

While it’s bad enough that former politicians have the ability to so egregiously cash in on their fame, the more-likely-than-not phony campaigns of candidates like Huckabee take the problem of money corrupting politics to a whole other level.

Aside from the questionable fiscal ethics of conjoining a bid for elected office with one’s personal financial agenda, running for president simply to make money later distorts our democratic discourse. Every candidate who campaigns insincerely takes time, money, and attention away from those making good faith bids for power. Even worse, when a genuine candidate and a mercenary one have overlapping constituencies, the unelectable alternative can take votes away from the option who could realistically advance the cause of his or her constituents.

Now, I have mixed feelings about this argument. I do agree that turning the serious matter of running for elected office into a public relations strategy to promote the celebrity's own visibility is bad for democracy. This is the kind of argument that resonates with Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and my own Amazing Ourselves to Death. 

On the other hand, the idea that having too many candidates constitutes a problem, something we're hearing a lot of lately with some 20 odd (and I do mean that in both senses) major party candidates right now, and that we should only focus on the candidates that have the best shot at winning strikes me as inimical to the proper functioning of a democracy, of the free marketplace of ideas, and I think that happens all too often. I know that this is a point on which my colleague and friend, Paul Levinson, and I agree.

Let them all have a voice, our political process is much too constrained as it is, I mean, why are only two parties given serious consideration? Doesn't that limit political discourse to a narrow range? Wouldn't more parties, as well as more candidates, broaden the range of opinions and ideas, and therefore make for better deliberations?

In taking this position, I hope you understand that I in no way endorse the candidacy of Huckabee, who Rozsa rightly points out is seen by many as something of a bigot:

Of course, in the case of candidates like Huckabee, the toxicity of their cause is in its own right a problem. Despite the enormous strides made in recent years on issues like gay rights, there are still many Americans who wish to make a political crusade out of denying basic civil liberties to men and women with different sexual orientations.

Even though he won’t become president, and is unlikely to be the Republican nominee, Huckabee’s candidacy will still serve as a focal point for anti-gay bigots throughout the country, giving them an outlet to exercise (at the very least symbolic) electoral power. To play this role sincerely is deplorable; to do so with the primary goal of making money is even worse.

At some future date, a historian studying the early 21st century may look back at the hucksterism of men like Mike Huckabee and wonder how he got away with it. For now, unfortunately, we have to live with yet another doomed campaign.

The upshot of all this, once again, is the problem of the blurring of the boundaries between politics, journalism, and entertainment, which again brings me back to our fatal amusements and amazements.

 ............................................................................ 

How are we to view Huckabee, after all? As a former governor, presidential candidate, and generally speaking, a politician? As a broadcast journalist? Or given the criticism of television news in general, and FOX News specifically, as an entertainer? His politics may be reactionary, but in his blurring of the boundaries, what he represents is downright revolutionary. And that too is cause for concern.