Analysis How ex-politicians make big bucks on the lucrative public speaking circuit
Barack Obama, George Osborne and David Cameron can all now command six-figure sums for a few pithy bon mots from the podium. But what do their audiences get out of it?
More than 70 years ago, in March 1946, Churchill – recently ousted as prime minister – turned up at Westminster college in Fulton, Missouri to present his views on the state of the world. The audience in Fulton certainly got more than it bargained for, because Churchill used his lecture to coin the phrase that came to describe the cold war: Britain’s wartime premier– with US president Harry Truman in the audience – described how an “iron curtain” had descended across Europe, from Stettin on the Baltic Sea to Trieste on the Adriatic.
These days, former US presidents are the biggest draw on the international speaker circuit. Their speeches can command hundreds of thousands of dollars from banks, hedge funds and corporations. The reasons behind inviting esteemed guest speakers have changed little down the years. Hosts are looking for political insight, information that makes them think they are in the know, or simply some juicy gossip.
By the standards of American chief executives, occupants of the White House are poorly paid: Obama will earn as much for his speech at Cantor Fitzgerald on the sensitive theme of healthcare issues as he earned in a year as president. His predecessors bagged far bigger fees: Bill Clinton once received $750,000 for addressing the telecoms company Ericsson in Hong Kong in 2011.
