Mr. Bush, Please Stop Charging $100,000 to Speak to Vets

For a former President who has promised to devote his retirement to helping veterans, Mr. Bush’s decision to charge $100,000 to deliver a speech to Helping a Hero charity and an additional $20,000 for a private jet is truly alarming.

President Barack Obama when asked if he would follow the example set by his predecessor and refrain from criticizing the policies of his successor responded: “…if there are issues that…go to core questions about our values and ideals, and if I think that it’s necessary or helpful for me to defend those ideals, I’ll examine it when it comes.” President George W. Bush and the self-imposed obscurity that he has chosen since his presidency ended have been praised as the ideal for which a former president ought to strive.

Mr. Bush has suggested that his withdrawal from public affairs in his retirement was inspired by his readings on George Washington, who, at the end of his time as commander-in-chief, rode away to Mount Vernon and refrained from interjecting himself into matters of government. Similarly, Harry Truman was known to keep a statue of a plow on his desk in recognition of his hero, the Roman general Cincinnatus, who relinquished governing power in favor of returning to his farm and plough.

Although the aspects of Mr. Bush’s retirement most frequently chronicled by the media have been his new hobby of painting and his work routines on his ranch, like former President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton, Mr. Bush has notably supplemented his income with paid speeches. This was, of course, a significant issue for Hillary Clinton’s campaign when she was criticized for charging large sums of money to speak at corporations and financial institutions in what some construed as payment for preferential treatment by the State Department.