[Morgan in Denver]

This is the first time I’ve heard anyone say Bush worked the system after leaving office for personal gain. Do you have some examples?

[kabar]

I said the Bushes. Both of them cashed in big time on their Presidencies, both personally as well as donations to their libraries.

On talk circuit, George W. Bush makes millions but few waves

Since 2009, the former president has given at least 200 paid speeches, typically pocketing $100,000 to $175,000 per appearance.

Dubya's Quiet $15 Million Payday

Other historians say Bush’s ride on the lecture circuit has become somewhat commonplace for former presidents, but is still troubling.

“It’s one thing to stay out of the public realm, which George Bush has said he wants to do,” said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University. “But then he goes on the speaking circuit and makes enormous amounts of money giving lectures mostly to corporate groups and other select audiences. Some Americans can find this distasteful.”

Zelizer added: “We’re in an era where there are countless fears about money and politics. I think former presidents have to be careful about what they’re doing with their speeches. For some people it’s another version of the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street.”

Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, and his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, also gave paid speeches. Reagan took heat for accepting $2 million for two speeches in Japan. But Bill Clinton took the ex-presidential lecture circuit to a new level. He earned $65 million in speaking fees from 2001 to 2009, according to a CNN review of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s financial disclosures. That included $7.5 million from 36 speeches in 2009 alone.

Bush 41 joined the Carlyle group in 1993. In the fall of 2003, Bush Senior finally resigned from the Carlyle Group as the accusations of family war profiteering grew louder. However, according to the Washington Post, he still retained stock in the firm and gave speeches on its behalf for a fee of $500,000.

Bush 41’s presidential library received donations from a sheik from the UAE, who contributed at least $1 million, the “state of Kuwait, the Bandar bin Sultan family, the Sultanate of Oman, King Hassan II of Morocco and the amir of Qatar. The former Korean prime minister and China also gave tens of thousands of dollars to the library.”