原文 Barack Obama's Next Job
翻译版本
满仓 2012-04-12 09:44:16 巴拉克奥巴马的下一份差事
His reelection is down to a coin toss, his mood glum. Eight ideas for Obama's post-POTUS career.
1. Midas Mouth
Previous Paid speaking engagements are a virtual ATM that can fund anything else Obama wants to do in life. It seems a foregone conclusion that Obama, whose campaign speeches electrified the nation in 2008, will keep the oratorical magic alive after he leaves office. The first step is signing with an agency. "The Washington Speakers Bureau, the Harry Walker Agency in New York City-they're all going to get into the biggest bidding war ever," says Ari Fleischer, a former spokesman for President George W. Bush. "So he'll be rich. And happy." Obama earns a $400,000 annual salary now. As a private citizen behind a lectern, he could make more than that per hour, speaking to universities, corporate conferences, and other elite gatherings.
Superhigh fees, though, create political pitfalls. Ronald Reagan drew intense criticism for accepting $2 million for a pair of speeches in Japan in 1989. Bill Clinton was lambasted for his first postpresidential speech, at a Morgan Stanley conference in Florida, for which he was paid more than $100,000, as it came amid furor over his pardon of donor Marc Rich.
While Obama could command stratospheric rates, given his prestige and silver tongue, the safer course is to take it slow, says Bill Leigh, whose Leigh Bureau has represented paid speakers for more than 80 years. "There's a tendency of people leaving Washington to say, 'I wanna get mine, right now.' It doesn't maximize revenue or reputation."
What would he do with all that dough? Build a compound in Hawaii? An ownership stake in his beloved Chicago Bulls? More likely for the serious-minded Obama: plowing the money back into his new foundation (see below).
Annual Earnings: $10 million or more
Likelihood: Very high
2. Obama U.
Previous "Obama has spent almost all of his adult life working at an urban university-either as a student or as adjunct professor of law," says historian Michael Beschloss. "Thus it is hard to imagine an ex-president Obama who is not, in some sense, teaching."
Would Obama want to run a university? Several prestigious schools have vacancies at the top, like Brown. A bolder move for Obama, though, would be to create his own teaching forum at his presidential library. These facilities have gotten bigger with each successive president-George W. Bush has already raised more than $300 million for his-and given that Obama hasn't exactly shied away from lavishness in the past (recall his 2008 convention speech in a football stadium), it's fair to wonder if the eventual library could include an Obama University—esque extension. Possible symposia: "In Defense of Compromise"; "Roots of the Economic Meltdown, 2001—08."
Either way, he would have a chance to create a facility unlike those of his predecessors. "Right off, you'd have to merge the Internet campaign with the Internet generation," says Cathy Trost of the Newseum. "?'Participatory' is key. Just as the news business is widening the definition of who is a journalist, museums are widening the definition of who is a curator." Look for it in Chicago, Obama's adopted hometown and an academic hub.
Annual Earnings: $0
Likelihood: Hard to say
3. Chairman of the Board
Previous White House alums have long heeded the siren call of the corporate board to cash in on their prestige. In exchange for attending a few dry meetings and letting CEOs name-check them at parties, high-profile politicians can bank hundreds of thousands of dollars by taking on a "director" title. Gerald Ford was elected to the board of the National Association of Securities Dealers in 1999, while Apple paid Al Gore $1.2 million in 2010 alone.
For a recession-era president like Obama, navigating the shoals of corporate cash would be tricky. Economist Paul Kedrosky says he might want to avoid private-equity firms and multinational conglomerates that evoke anti-Wall Street sentiment. "It's more likely he ends up with the Silicon Valley crowd," says Kedrosky. "Growth-oriented tech companies would like the younger, hipper ex-president" attached to their brands. Possibilities include behemoths Apple and Google, but if he's looking for a hometown horse to bet on, fast-growing Groupon is based in Chicago. And as Facebook prepares for a $10 billion IPO, Mark Zuckerberg could come knocking.
Annual Earnings: $1.2 million
Likelihood: Possible, but remote
4. Bill Clinton 2.0
As they reap the benefits of their outsize earning power, ex-presidents are expected to channel some of the cash flow they attract toward meaningful philanthropic projects. "I think most of us have pursued the causes that have occupied us most when we were in the White House," says former president Jimmy Carter. Philanthropy is also where ex-presidents seek to redeem themselves from in-office blunders. After the Clinton administration let genocide and famine go unchecked in Rwanda and Somalia, for example, the Clinton Foundation brought Bill back to the region with billions of dollars in aid. And the Clinton Global Initiative sometimes seems to overshadow the U.N. with its high-profile world-saving missions, projected to total nearly $70 billion so far.
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