Former President Barack Obama, newly returned to America from his extended south sea retreat, is starting to do what many recently retired chief executives do, which is to rake it in as much as he can as quickly as he can. Along with the inevitable book deal, Obama us selling the one talent he has, which is making speeches. He has already lined up a $400,000 gig at the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald LP. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, is not pleased and is wondering what is going on.
Warren’s problem is that she believed that Obama meant it when he inveighed against Wall Street and its wicked ways.
The problem is that the president was the best friend Wall Street ever had, hobnobbing with the well-heeled and handing out special favors. To be sure the former president supported all sorts of measures that did violence for the free market and tamped down on economic growth and job creation. But those laws and regulations fell heaviest on small business, people struggling to get rich. The already rich have battalions of lawyers and accountants who made sure they were not touched by anything the Obama administration did. The Wall Street fat cats were duly appreciative.
To be fair, Donald Trump is the same way. He raged against Wall Street and other special interests who were sticking it to the little guy.
Then he staffed his administration with people from firms like Goldman Sachs. The move was only natural. Wall Street investment bankers know how the economy works, unlike the academics whom Obama tended to rely on.
Elizabeth Warren’s problem is that when she rages against the fat cat bankers and hedge fund managers, she really means it.
So it genuinely disturbs her that Obama is now running around, taking Wall Street’s filthy lucre.
Obama’s conservative critics are not surprised and, indeed, even approve of the former president cashing in. Obama is a relatively young former president and can expect to live another thirty or more years. He will need to make a lot of speeches to rich audiences to keep him and his family in the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed.
The right understands making money and does not attach any ill-intent to it. The attitude of Obama’s enemies is that he should go for it and make as much as he can manage.
Of course, some gleeful schadenfreude directed at Senator Warren and others who find themselves aghast at Obama’s raking it in is involved here. The right knew Obama for the hypocrite that he was and has made peace with that fact. The left is just beginning to find out.
