Joe Biden was never shy about exploiting his public service for personal gain. The man who never took home a paycheck worth more than $230,000 or wrote a book anybody ever read somehow amassed a net worth of around $10 million — and that was before he assumed (or at least appeared to assume) all the powers of the Oval Office.
When word came out that Biden had signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) just a couple of weeks after leaving office to help him book those sweet post-presidential speaking gigs, my first temptation was to enjoy a hearty laugh. Who was going to pay a six-figure speaking fee to a man whose archenemies include teleprompters and simple motor functions?
Not to mention all the inevitable riders that quickly drive the expenses up even higher. There’s the private flight, the staffers, and in Biden’s case, a whole team of body men to make sure he doesn’t wander off, shake hands with ghosts instead of the guests, or soil his diaper.
But whatever you or I might think of Biden, he is a former president, and they usually command significant speaking fees — for reasons I’ll get to momentarily. As a practicing capitalist, I thought I ought to squelch my laughter and let the market decide Biden’s value as a public speaker.
Well, the market has spoken, and now I’m laughing hard enough to shatter the ice in my breakfast scotch.
“Former President Joe Biden’s attempt to bill $300,000 per speaking appearance is finding few takers,” the New York Post reported late on Thursday. “Some of his own former aides say it’s time for the 82-year-old to leave the spotlight for good after reminiscing about ‘colored kids’ Tuesday in his first public address since leaving office.
“CAA is having trouble booking gigs, which isn’t surprising,” the tipster said. The Post’s Steven Nelson added, “The precise reason that Biden is struggling to find top-dollar audiences is unclear.”
Oh, please. Biden didn’t have any juice when he was still in the Oval Office. Now that he’s out, he’s the geriatric version of Less Than Zero.
Assuming Biden does manage to land more gigs after Tuesday’s racially tinged fiasco, his asking price is nothing to brag about. “My good friend Barack,” as Biden likes to describe his former boss, has a post-presidential asking price of $400,000, so one Biden is worth three-quarters of an Obama. Honestly, I can’t decide which one of them should be more embarrassed.
To be fair, Obama’s current asking price is still the same $400,000 today as when he first left office, but Bidenflation eroded the value of that down to about $308,000 in ’17 dollars. So it seems that Biden isn’t the only ex-president currently available at a discount.
And Another Thing: Bill and Hillary Clinton didn’t become multicentimillionaires providing valuable goods or services in the free market, either. They were a couple of small-town hustlers who schemed and scrambled their way into the big time, and then were flagrant and unapologetic about exploiting the White House for all it was worth. Not only were they never called to account, they even made a second and third run at it in 2008 and 2016 — and nearly succeeded. What a stain on our national honor those two are.
Of course, former presidents don’t get six-figure public speaking gigs because their words are so valuable. They get paid six figures because even though they’ve left office — or in Biden’s case, were hounded out of it by his own party’s power brokers — they still have some juice.
(I’m willing to admit that prestige plays a part in paying former presidents to appear, but only if you’re willing to admit that in our increasingly corrupt system, it plays a shrinking part.)
Former presidents have friends in high places, whether they’re on Capitol Hill, K Street, or foreign capitals. A whisper into a former president’s ear at the right place and time can yield riches. But getting close enough to whisper requires one of those six-figure speaking arrangements.
Hardly anyone wants to whisper in Joe Biden’s ear because, as one former White House staffer told the Post, “We just wanted him to enjoy retirement like other presidents — not go out like this.”
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