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How Much is a Bush Speech Worth?
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The soon-to-be ex-president is planning to “replenish the ol’ coffers” on the lecture circuit. Will anybody be willing to pay?
The lecture circuit is the fate that awaits all ex-presidents of the United States, and a little over a week from now, it will be President Bush's turn to take the gilded podium. According to one industry source, Bush is already in talks with Washington, D.C., lawyer Robert Barnett, who helped manage Bill Clinton's transition to the private sector and negotiated Laura Bush's recent book deal. (Barnett declined to comment for this article). Bush has wondered aloud about his after-dinner career. In an interview for Robert Draper's 2007 book Dead Certain, Bush said that he planned to “replenish the ol' coffers” on the lecture circuit, where he could make “ridiculous money.”
“My feeling is that for the first year there probably will be minimal interest in him,” said one agent who works in the public speaking business.
“I don’t know what my dad gets. But it’s more than fifty, seventy-five [thousand],” Bush told Draper.
But Bush, of course, is a unique ex-president. He’s far less popular than his dad, or Bill Clinton (who earned more than $50 million in speaking fees from 2001 to 2007) or Ronald Reagan (who once made $2 million for a single set of speeches in Japan). Throw in the toxic economic environment that emerged on his watch, and it’s worth asking just how much Bush can hope to earn with a speech.
“I imagine people will not pay the same dollars that a compelling speaker like Bill Clinton could command,” says speechwriter Mark Katz, a former Clinton speechwriter who heads a consulting company, the Soundbite Institute. “The George W. Bush years are going to be like our collective junior high school years, something we had to endure but engenders little or no nostalgia.”
Another industry veteran said that Bush will find it rough going at first, but that his value might increase over time, perhaps even approaching Clinton's standard domestic fees of $100,000 to $200,000 a speech if the economy bounces back. The assessment echoes similar valuations of Bush’s planned memoirs, which some think would be worth more if written after a few years have passed.
“My feeling is that for the first year there probably will be minimal interest in him,” said one agent who works in the public speaking business. “There have been other former presidents who've been unpopular leaving office, but nobody's ever been this unpopular. After a year, though, people forget and then he'll have a very lucrative career.”
Bush’s ex-presidential career may get off to a quicker start than that. According to David Wheeler, president of Chicago-based public relations firm Embark LLC, there's always a demand for members of the elite ex-presidents club, even the members who were all but run out of office.
“I'm certain there's going to be a lot of interest among different organizations around the country and around the world,” Wheeler said. “I don't necessarily agree with him and a lot of others don't I'm sure, but a lot of people didn't agree with Bill Clinton and he was obviously very popular on the lecture circuit.”
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Banjo1
The Arab states will make GWB rich if he doesn't draw flies anywhere else, which is the likelihood. He has traded on the family name and connections all his life and the Golden Years will be no exception.
ScottRose
There is no good reason why President George W. Bush shouldn't be able to give Bernard Madoff a speech on the benefits of deregulation.
roger37
Maybe "W" could do recruiting trips at major colleges and universities to expound the benefit of a Harvard B-school degree. I'm sure they would at least pick up his hotel and food bill.
pmshaw
"Speaking fees" are just another way of paying off public officials for favors done while in office. They are legalized graft. Shortly before he left office, Reagan signed orders greatly benefiting Japanese manufacturers trading with the US. After leaving office he went on a multi-million dollar speaking tour of Japan. Anybody really believe they had any interest in what he had to say? W will be doing the same thing. Expect to see him speaking to oil companies and mining companies as payback for opening up the public lands to them.
UncleSam
As long as W doesn't answer any questions or allow questions to be asked, the bubblehead should be okay, though I'm not sure how often he'll have to duck flying penny loafers ...
MarkieBee
Don't you need to be able to speak well before you actually get to make money doing it? How many businesses are willing to spend $50,000 to get the honor of having 43 come to their annual stockholder meeting and utter something like, "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system."
Ozuchu
He's in super hot demand! The buzz among the carnies is that he's gonna help them make a killing on this summer's Dunk Tank Circuit...
Snertly
He might do well with a Lessons Learned/Where We Went Wrong series, and a tell-all book pinning blame on Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. would probably be a best seller. Not that we can reasonably expect such a thing, but it would be interesting regardless of the excuses given.
tygirl
W will have his hard core republicans paying for his speaking tours.You know the Jonh McCain and Sarah Palin followers.
Limbaugh, Hannity,Billo the clown, Dick Morris, you know all the regulars of FAUX NOISE. They just love being dilusional.
SmartMouth
He could probably replenish them coffers faster by hiring himself out to sit in dunk tanks.
NoMoWeHo
Only the addle brained would pay to hear the Porky Pig speaking nitwit of a President speak. Personally I can't wait until his memoirs are printed in crayon. Then his Presidential library will have one book and the complete video works of My Little Pony... .and yet I am sure the place will cost billions.
truestarr
If people won't pay him to hear him speak, I'm sure there's plenty of shoe throwing folks with big bucks who'd like him to just stand around.
jacox212
To call his utterances of scrambled syntax, shifting tenses, thoughts which can only be described as inane meanderings of his "mind", and his episodes of stumbling silences where is brain is trying to conjure up an actual synapse, a speech is stretching that word to its limit.
The people who are stupid enough to pay to hear him are the same type of people who actually think Sarah Palin is smart.
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n--Y--Portmanteaubette1893
How about a beer and a barbecue circuit? W was supposed to be the president you wanted to have a beer with - this would serve him better I think - he could get off a few off-color remarks to start things up and then circulate, circulate.
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