I’m reading that Clinton charges $125,000 for a domestic speech and a foreign appearance brings $250,000, plus expenses like travel & accommodation. So the final bill for a speech abroad could cost the hosts considerably more than the $250,000.(Secret Service protection is funded by the U.S. taxpayer).
My question is this: What could Clinton say that is remotely worth a cool quarter of a million dollars? I understand that the prestige of having the former President appearing at your company is a great part of it; but what on earth do you expect him to say? And if you are Clinton, what do you expect to deliver?
Why do lots of celebrities get absurdly high fees for speaking engagements, when it’s known what they’re going to say anyway? (Or is that the point? Do people not want to learn anything new when they go to hear a speech?) Why do ex-presidents and other aging celebrities get enormous sums for memoirs when it’s a good bet that they’ll have nothing interesting to say? It’s a good bet that a politician’s memoirs will lose money, so it can’t be that the publishers think that it’s worth it. It’s like there’s a system in which rich people subsidize other celebrity’s retirements by paying far too much to them to make speeches and to write memoirs.
Not that I have the least little bit of respect for the man, but if somebody’s dumb enough to give him that kind of money to rehash what he’s already said in other places he might as well take advantage of it.
[Disclaimer] The above post was not meant to be insensitive to Alzheimer’s patients, though if it works that way, great. Rather, it was meant to refer to the Iran-Contra hearings, in which the so-called greatest president ever was heard to reply, “Welllll…I don’t recall,” quite often. [/Disclaimer]
I used to be on the board of my college’s “Distinguished Speakers Program”, so I know a little bit about what celebrities yack about when paid for it. In most cases, i was VERY dissappointed with what our well-paid speakers prattled on about:
-(the late) Dr. Werner von Braun: actually quite entertaining, and very polite. His speech was pretty much a rehash of the preface of one of his books.
-Dr. Arthur C. Clarke: lousy speech, he just read one of his printed essays
-The late Moe Howard: very entertaining, not much content
-H.H. Humphrey: a total bore
My conclusion: very few of these people are worth listening to, least of all the disgraced, almost-indicted ex-president!
Back in '88 I went to hear Gerald Ford give a presentation at SUNY-Buffalo–he was actually pretty interesting. It was free admission, though, and I have no idea what they paid him.
Back in the days when I was a student government weenie I got this solicitation urging us to book some big wheel with the American Communist Party (I don’t remember the name) to come speak–give people a different perspective, it said. What got me, though, was that the Communist wanted paid 10 grand to come propagandize the student body. I guess it’s nice work if you can get it.
An acquaintance of mine, who is unknown, nothing special, and female to boot (which reduces one’s price on the speech circuit, grrrr…) gets up to $90k to blather about net commerce.
In light of that, Clinton seems almost cheap.
Although I would be very interested to know the content of his speeches…
Nah. I meant that to head off the overly sensitive among us who’d take it to mean I was ripping Reagan for Alzheimers. Just threw in a touch of sarcasm with it.
To be perfectly honest, of all of the people in your post ('cept perhaps Werner von Braun), I’d be most interested in hearing the disgraced, almost-indicted ex-president by a huge margin. That applies to Clinton, Reagan, or even Nixon when the end times come and he walks the earth once more.
I think that the explanation for Clinton’s huge fee is fairly simple. There’s a small army of reporters and journalists who still follow him wherever he goes, so it brings publicity to whatever company or institution is paying the bill. Your speaking fee is not determined by what you say, it’s just determined by how much publicity you can generate.
Stoid-it was when Reagan was being questioned about Iran-Contra, he kept saying, “I don’t recall,” or “I don’t remember”-which showed how frightenly out of touch the man was with what went on during his watch.
If I had a chance to hear a president speak, I’d choose Carter.