Harry Truman just went home.
After his presidency ended in January,1953 he caught a train and went back to Independence, Missouri to live in his mother-in law’s house. Always a man of modest means, Truman didn’t even own a house.
Before the era of the imperial American presidency — or imperial ex-presidency — all Truman had in the way of retirement income was his World War I U.S. Army pension of $112 a month.
The irony here is that while Truman was commander-in-chief of all U.S. forces in the waning days of World War II, which constituted some 8 million men and women, his army pension was based on his service as a World War I artillery officer.
Nevertheless, Truman refused to cash in on his presidency, turning down numerous business offers that would have had him trade his public office for private gain.
He said, “I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency.”
While Truman did earn some money from his memoirs, he did not make paid speeches, set up phony foundations, or serve on any boards.
In reaction to Truman’s financial plight, Congress in 1958 passed the Former Presidents Act that allowed for a presidential pension of $25,000 (over $200,000 today), as well as office help and mailing privileges.
Truman was not the last president to leave the presidency without later using it as a cash cow.
Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who followed Truman in the White House, retired in 1961 to his farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. There, the former U.S. commander of allied troops in Europe during World War II wrote books and lived modestly.
The same could be true of former President Jimmy Carter. After losing the presidency in 1980 to Ronald Reagan, Carter returned to Georgia, quietly wrote books and joined Habitat for Humanity, the nonprofit that builds homes for the less fortunate. At age 92, he is still at it.
This contrasts sharply to the news last week that former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle signed a massive $50 million contract with Netflix. He and Michelle will produce films, television shows, and educational videos.
It helped that Susan Rice, Obama’s former national security adviser, sits on the Netflix board of directors.
Also helpful were Ted Sarandos Jr. and his wife Nicole Avant. Sarandos is creative content chief at Netflix. The pair helped bundle $600,000 to Obama in campaign contributions in 2012.
The Obama Netflix deal came on the heels of news that the Obamas had signed a whopping $65 million book deal with Penguin Random House for a series of family books, the first of which will be Michelle’s memoir that will be released later this year.
Obama, you may recall, campaigned against rich corporations in 2010. He said, “I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”
He is also the man who in a 2009 “60 Minutes” interview, said, “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.”
Those thoughts did not stop Obama from giving the keynote address at a health care conference sponsored by the Wall Street investment firm of Cantor Fitzgerald LLP last September.
Obama was paid $400,000 for the speech, which is twice the amount that Hillary Clinton used to charge when everyone thought she was going to be president, but less than the $500,000 Bill Clinton got from the Russians for a speech in Moscow.
Barack and Michelle Obama have their work cut out for them if they plan to make more money than Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The practice of selling the presidency did not start with the Clintons or the Obamas. They just turned it into an art form. Both Clinton and Obama were men of modest means when they became president. Both are now multi- millionaires.
The selling really started with former President Gerald Ford. After he was defeated by Jimmy Carter in 1976, Ford hit the speaking circuit with a vengeance. He was America’s guest. The two Bushes were not bad at it either.
Ford was a trailblazer. If you wanted Ford on your board of directors, like 20th Century Fox, Citigroup and others, all you had to do was ask. In addition, he played more paid golf than Tiger Woods.
The Clintons and the Obamas are following in his footsteps. Big time.
As president, Harry Truman once famously said: “The buck stops here.”
With Clinton and Obama it was, “The bucks start here.”
Email comments to: luke1825@aol.com.
