TV show takes ex-presidents’ buckraking to another level
WHEN IT was revealed that Barack Obama was going to hit the post-presidency lecture circuit with a bang – pulling in an obscenely high fee of $400 000 (R5.3 million) from the firm Cantor Fitzgerald for what is sure to be a boilerplate address on the need to come together as a nation, or some such, few batted an eye. But a complaint was lodged from a surprising source: Vox’s Matthew Yglesias, scourge of the Jacobin-reading left and noted “neoliberal”, suggested the deal was not only unseemly but also counterproductive.
“The Clinton family had earned tens of millions of dollars over the years thanks to buckraking speaking fees that raised fundamental questions in people’s minds about the motives of both their public policy and their philanthropic work,” Yglesias wrote.
“You see from the success of Emmanuel Macron in France and Justin Trudeau in Canada that centre-left politics remains perfectly viable around the world when its leaders are trusted. But you also see from the ongoing meltdown of the UK Labour Party how the perception that Tony Blair used his prime ministership primarily to vault himself into the ranks of the global financial elite can poison a political tendency’s reputation.”
Simply put, normal folks find something mean and grubby about the idea of a president pandering to global elites for big bucks. And HBO’s Veep, which recently began its sixth season, is helpfully illustrating just that point.
Some worried that the ascendancy of Donald Trump would render the satirical impact of the prestige comedy obsolete, that life was now so much stranger than fiction that the machinations of the now-ex-president Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) would fall somewhere between too hopeful and too close to reality for comfort. But by getting Meyer out of the White House and on to the post-presidency fundraising circuit, Veep is, ironically, more relevant than ever.
As the show opens, we see that Meyer has reconciled with her awful husband, Andrew (David Pasquesi), and that the two of them are trying to find ways to raise the funds necessary for her to not only maintain the lifestyle to which Selina had become accustomed, but also build a presidential library.
With the show’s customary salty language and florid phrasing, we see her instructing her minions to negotiate with banks to get private jets for speeches; we see Andrew asking her to pull strings to get foreigners off no-fly lists and dullard children into colleges in exchange for donations. It’s all pathetic and small – behaviour unbecoming of someone who served the nation in the highest capacity possible.
A proper legacy, of course, requires much more – a fact that the newest ex-president knows all too well. In a fascinating August 2015 New York Times article that revealed then-President Obama cajoled titans of industry and the arts to eat and drink and listen to him until the witching hour approached, we also learned that he planned on amassing an enormous war chest to cement his legacy and influence global affairs going forward.
Maybe that millions raised from private citizens and massive corporations alike comes with no strings attached, maybe it doesn’t; Lord knows Barack Obama is in a better position to garner cash than Selina Meyer. But it certainly engenders resentment, creates the appearance of corruption and raises questions about how we want our ex-presidents to behave.