What does a person get after the U.S. presidency’s over and done with? We answer a question from listener Patrick, who asks if former presidents get anything special. Do they ever, and we lay out the perks of having once held the highest office in the land.
Transcript
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:02] You know, I once read that the cast of Ocean's 11 would check into hotels with the last name president. So if they got a wake up call or whatever it would be for Mr. President.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:12] Table for 11 for Mr. President.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:14] Although, frankly, I feel like a table for Mr. Clooney and Mr. Damon would probably get you further. This is civics one on one. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:27] I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:28] And today we are looking into [00:00:30] what exactly it means to carry that honorary president around. But you know, for real, like, what do you get being Mr. President, even after you leave the White House in your rear view? But credit where credit is due. This question did not come from us.
Mary Ellen Wessels: [00:00:48] Hi, I'm Mary Ellen Wessels. I teach middle school civics at Gate City Charter School for the Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire. One of my students, Patrick, asked me a great question that I really didn't know the answer to. [00:01:00]
Patrick: [00:01:01] Does a former President have any special privileges like bodyguards or free stuff, Things like that?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:09] It turns out, Patrick, that there is a whole act of Congress that takes care of this entire question. But first, I have to get something out of the way. Once a president, always a president is a president president for life.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:26] Well, it's like pretty specifically not [00:01:30] how it works.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:31] And yet.
Archival: [00:01:32] Well, Mr. President, what do you think of that fellow compared to the politicians you see these days? Well, that's one of the first times I've ever seen myself on television, as I was telling you before the show began. I simply have a phobia about that.
Archival: [00:01:44] But President Carter, Mrs. Carter, it is so wonderful to see both of you. Thank you for talking with us. 75 years of marriage.
Archival: [00:01:53] And you will hear President Clinton, one of only two presidents in U.S. history, to face impeachment, tell how he considers [00:02:00] that a badge of honor. Please welcome President George W Bush.
Archival: [00:02:05] Hello, Mr. President. Thank you.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:10] This is the first thing I want to get to, Nick. Does the president keep their title when they leave office?
Nick Capodice: [00:02:17] I think they do, don't they? Like you always see it in the news. President Carter. President Nixon. It's never just removed. They don't just say Barack Obama.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:25] So here's the story, because it's not only former presidents who [00:02:30] are addressed and referred to as their former job, it's also former senators as Mr. or Madam Senator, former Cabinet secretaries as Mr. or Madame Secretary. However, Nick, there is no federally mandated in writing rule that a former president continues to be addressed as such or formally retains their title. This is a tradition slash propriety thing. It is simply a show of respect.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:59] But in [00:03:00] terms of what these individuals are called on a daily basis, I feel like most people default to the traditional way of doing things.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:07] They do indeed. However, I wanted a little bit more of a hard and fast answer. So allow me to introduce you, Nick, to the Protocol School of Washington.
Archival: [00:03:18] You will learn programs such as how to succeed in the international arena, dine like a diplomat, and outclass the competition. These programs give you the tools to teach international.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:29] I want to learn [00:03:30] how to dine like a diplomat. What is the protocol School of Washington? I feel like I need to go there.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:36] It's a place that teaches people basically super high level business and government etiquette and also just regular.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:45] Etiquette like which spoon to use walking around with a book on your head, that sort of thing.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:49] I think probably that is a part of it, but also how to not horribly insult that particular shah during tea. But the protocol school's take on [00:04:00] it is that for jobs that are only held by one person at a time like the governor of a particular state or, you know, the president of the United States of America, it is not respectful to the current officeholder to address the former office holder with the same title, but with jobs that more than one person holds, like senator, Admiral, etc. that person should be addressed by [00:04:30] their former title.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:31] That is some very specific protocol.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:33] But actually it does make sense. The idea is partially a respect thing and partially that a president, unlike, say, a general or a doctor, has not achieved some kind of lasting rank. After Eisenhower left office, he was General Eisenhower again.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:54] What are we actually supposed to call the former president?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:57] Yeah. So both according to the protocol [00:05:00] school in Washington and I found another set of guidelines by the US Embassy in the United Kingdom, The answer is the honorable.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:10] The honorable, like the honorable Ronald Reagan, the honorable Martin Van Buren.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:18] Which actually sounds closer to royalty than the alternative, don't you think? Yeah, which would probably not thrilled George Washington, who specifically wanted a title that could have a mr. [00:05:30] before it to avoid any comparison at all to a monarch.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:34] Hey, Mr..
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:35] Anyway, such is the strange world of etiquette, and people are going to keep calling the former president, President So-and-so. But I have said my piece. So let's get to that post-presidency life. And I want to start with money. I'm going to talk about what the government legally owes a former president. But that isn't the sum total [00:06:00] of what a former president typically gets. If you become Nick, one of the most famous people on the planet, you tend to stay pretty famous even after you leave the job that skyrocketed you. And that means a lot of people want to hear what you have to say.
Nick Capodice: [00:06:21] Yeah. So as a quick side note, George H.W. Bush was my commencement speaker in high school in 1997.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:28] That will forever be amazing [00:06:30] to me.
Nick Capodice: [00:06:30] And it's kind of strange because George H.W. did not actually attend the school that I went to. So what the heck was he doing speaking at my graduation?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:40] Well, that's actually quite the easy answer. A former president as a commencement speaker, they do it all the time. And it's not just commencements. They speak to private businesses at corporate events. They speak at charity events. And why do they do this, Nick? Because they can make you pay.
Archival: [00:07:00] You [00:07:00] want me to talk about leadership? I can't even get on the stage. I felt very relieved when I told them that I was going to give this speech on the gold standard and the international balance of payments. It only takes about 50 minutes. Hello, Stanford. They all send me. It is great for me and my appreciation. All of you here in this room for your warm welcome. And [00:07:30] those outside have made me feel very much at home.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:38] How much are we talking?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:39] Well, Bill Clinton is the speech maker to end all speech makers. He is said to charge between a quarter and a half a million dollars per speaking engagement.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:48] Holy cow.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:49] He speaks a lot.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:51] My gosh.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:52] Barack Obama reportedly keeps it at 400 grand as his nominal fee for speaking engagement. Ronald Reagan [00:08:00] reportedly accepted $1 million once for a speaking engagement in Japan. That got him into a lot of trouble at the time because U.S. relations with Japan were not doing so hot. Jimmy Carter does not accept many fees. Every once in a while, Jimmy Carter will go for it, because that's not really his M.O. if you know Carter. Right. And when he does accept a fee, he tends to donate it.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:22] Oh, but overall, the point you're making is you can easily become a millionaire if you're not already by just talking to people [00:08:30] who have money to burn.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:32] It is that simple, though. You are probably going to get heat for that burn. People were not very happy that Obama accepted some of those $400,000 fees from Wall Street firms, for example. There is a pretty big ethical question around all of this. Fortunately, you have another option. You can write one or several books and make millions of dollars on sales, which former presidents pretty much always do. Jimmy Carter has written 30, [00:09:00] 30 books.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:01] 30. And it's unfortunate that our book did not result in earning millions of dollars as well. Maybe you and I should write 29 more.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:09] Maybe we should.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:10] Write. Let's say a former president doesn't do any of that. What do they get without even trying without going out and giving speeches?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:17] You mean aside from the trying they did to become and be president?
Nick Capodice: [00:09:21] Yeah, aside from that little thing.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:25] Well, we've got a little something called the former Presidents Act.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:29] Okay. Now we're getting to [00:09:30] the point.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:30] Yeah, it was passed in 1958. It's a federal law originally with the subtitle to provide retirement, clerical assistance and free mailing privileges to former presidents of the United States and for other purposes, free mailing privileges. Heck, this is called franked mail. Franked mail. This is something that has been around in the US federal government for a long time, and it basically means that you can just sign a piece of mail instead of putting a stamp on it. [00:10:00] But apparently it was widely abused for quite a while because it's not just for former presidents and for a long time it wasn't. But Congress members had it and they would loan their friends and family their franking privileges. There's a legend that one senator franked his horse's bridle and sent the animal home on the government's dime. And that is why the franking privileges disappeared for a while. But they came back eventually with some restrictions.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:29] All right. I have a lot of questions [00:10:30] about franking, but I'm going to stick to the topic at hand. The president didn't get franking privileges until 1958.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:37] Frankly, Nick? No, reportedly and I do mean reportedly, because, Nick, do I have a bombshell coming for you? Harry Truman could not afford to pay for his deluge of correspondences when he left the presidential office. The former president's act was passed five years later than that whole time Truman had spent bemoaning how [00:11:00] broke he was post-presidency. Truman's public complaints about being so broke are reportedly part of the reason why Congress finally passed the FPA.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:10] And as the bombshell that Truman was broke.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:13] Oh, no.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:14] All right. I'm going to accept the thrill of anticipation in the meantime. But I'd like to know, was Truman the first president to be like, hey, I haven't a penny to my name. And it's all because I devoted myself to this country for years on end. [00:11:30]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:30] He may have been the first to make such a big thing about it. Truman insisted he would not leverage his name or his influence for money, while also noting that he had to take a loan to pay his bills after he left office. There simply was no pension for presidents prior to 1958, and there are a handful of stories of presidents leaving the White House only to have to move in with family because they were in such dire straits. Thomas Jefferson spent pretty much his entire adulthood in debt, and that did not change when he left office. Though [00:12:00] he lived a comfortable life facilitated by enslaved people at Monticello and reportedly died feeling just fine about himself. Ulysses S Grant, on the other hand, just barely managed to sell his memoirs before his death with the help of Mark Twain, actually to ensure that his family would not be saddled with his poverty when he died.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:20] But some presidents were real rich, though, right?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:23] Oh, yeah. George Washington. Andrew Jackson. Theodore Roosevelt. Really? Super [00:12:30] duper loaded.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:31] Yeah, loaded. But eventually Congress said, okay, enough's enough. Let's make sure former presidents don't die utterly broke.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:39] That's right. So in addition to the mail franking, the 1958 Act provided an annual pension equal to the pay received by an executive cabinet secretary. Today, that is $219,000.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:54] It's not too bad. In other words, barring extenuating circumstances, former [00:13:00] presidents should be totally fine, financially speaking.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:04] Yeah, exactly. One provision, however, in the ACT, former presidents will not be provided that pension if they take an appointed or elected role in the federal government or Washington DC that pays a true salary.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:18] Which former presidents don't really do. As far as I.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:20] Know, they really don't. I mean, once you reach the top, you know.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:23] And you said this act provides for clerical assistance, what does that mean?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:29] All right. So [00:13:30] just because you leave the highest office in the land, that does not mean that you stop needing a staff. There's a lot to do. You need to establish a library. You need to write about what it was like to be president. You have to deal with tons of mail. Thank goodness it's franked. You have to attend events. You are a public person for the rest of your life.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:53] I've always wondered what it would be like to be the kind of person who could say, you know, my people will be in touch.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:58] Yeah, This act pretty much [00:14:00] guarantees that the president has taxpayer funded people forever or person, depending on how much you choose to pay them. The act provides $96,000 a year for staff who, quote, shall be responsible only to him, him being the president.
Nick Capodice: [00:14:16] So following the Constitution rules here, the president is a quote. Him. Yep.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:23] And there's more where that came from. Also, when it comes to paying for staff members for the first 30 months after a president leaves office, [00:14:30] they get way more than that 96 grand. They get 150,000 total to pay for staff.
Nick Capodice: [00:14:36] And I guess the idea behind that is you have a lot more responsibilities that are really intense immediately after you leave office before you become comfortably a former president resting on your laurels, painting self portraits in the bathtub.
Archival: [00:14:49] From what I read, sir, it sounds as though you were ready to dismiss the idea of W as an artist, but you changed your mind.
Archival: [00:14:56] I was sure I would hate them, but there was something kind of innocent, sincere [00:15:00] also that was so strange to see a man who had seen the entire world paint himself alone in a bathroom in the bathtub naked.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:11] You know, those George W Bush self portraits were actually leaked after an email hack. He did not intend for us all to see those.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:18] I did not. I did not know that I actually quite enjoyed his work.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:21] Too, honestly. Now, one thing about the staff pay we're talking about there are caps on what any one presidential staff member can make [00:15:30] based on the executive branch pay schedule. So I was like, What's that? I looked up the executive branch pay schedule currently from level one to level five NEC, nobody is making less than 165,000 a year.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:45] So basically, Hannah, we should hang up our headphones and start looking at a career in civil service.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:49] If either of us is going to be Secretary of Defense, we've got to get working on it now. But why not dream Also weird provision in this pay thing? The act specifically says that the pay cap does not apply [00:16:00] to independent contractors who help with record transfers to the National Archives or to the presidential libraries.
Nick Capodice: [00:16:08] Now, we won't go down this rabbit hole in this particular episode, but I think concern about the management of records for our most recent former president tells us just how important and valuable the federal government considers them. So that checks out.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:23] Actually, I think so, too. There's a reason why they they're willing to put so much money towards record management, right?
Nick Capodice: [00:16:29] Yeah. [00:16:30]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:30] All right. Moving on. We've got the pension, the clerical staff. What else does a former president get? Quote, suitable office space, appropriately furnished and equipped.
Nick Capodice: [00:16:40] What's the budget for suitable office space?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:42] Well, apparently, sky's the limit because the act does not even attempt to set a cap on the cost of a physical office.
Nick Capodice: [00:16:48] But tell me you looked into it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:49] Oh, I looked into it because, by the way, Nick, a lot of this is made public by the General Services Administration because it's our taxpayer money that's being spent here. So they don't break it down by individual [00:17:00] president. I found some other research that tried to do just that. Bill Clinton's New York office, the rent was reportedly 429,000 a year in 2021. That same year, George W Bush's Texas office was 434,000 a year.
Nick Capodice: [00:17:16] The rent to these places have pools.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:19] To be fair, Nick, neither one of us, to my knowledge, has attempted to rent office space in a major metropolitan area, so I have no idea if this is reasonable or [00:17:30] not. But it is not like a former president can say, Well, I'll be taking over the entirety of the Ritz-Carlton in Manhattan for my office space. I mean, I suppose they can try, but the administrator of General Services gets to decide what's appropriate. There's no cap on how much can be spent. But there is a person saying $4 million a year is a little outrageous. All right. Other costs, we pay their office phone and utility bills. [00:18:00]
Nick Capodice: [00:18:00] Former president, you can't even cover your own phone bill.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:03] The total requested budget for 2022 from all of the former presidents together for communications and utilities was $216,000. Now, there is also a budget line item for transportation of things, of things which was appropriated for reasons I will probably never know, eight grand in 2021 to move things. And [00:18:30] yet nobody requested a thing. Transportation budget for 2022.
Nick Capodice: [00:18:34] I'm already way over budget on thing transportation that. Sierra. Hannah Yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:38] It's pretty much your one vice.
Nick Capodice: [00:18:39] All right, I have to ask you something here.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:41] All right?
Nick Capodice: [00:18:42] Because I feel I have waited long enough.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:44] Sure.
Nick Capodice: [00:18:45] You hinted and you've been hinting before we even track this episode, Hannah, that you have some big old Harry Truman bombshells.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:53] Yes. Okay. Right. So, very importantly, Congress found Harry Truman's supposed [00:19:00] financial straits convincing enough to finally pass what they'd been chewing over for a while. The former president's act. Poor Harry. Right, Right. Wrong.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:12] Wrong.
Archival: [00:19:13] Do you think it's appropriate for a former president to have to go about raising funds in order to house his official favor? Well, no. And I'll give you my viewpoint on the subject. And if you've got the time for it and the reason why it had to be done.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:28] There's this law professor and journalist [00:19:30] named Paul Campos, who did a bunch of research at none other than the Harry Truman Presidential Library. Read Truman's own account of his finances and found that the same guy who went on TV and told the American public that former executives are, quote, allowed to starve was worth about $650,000 at the end of his presidency.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:54] That's amazing. 650 [00:20:00] grand. Okay. I know you hate to do this, but can we just talk about, like, adjusting for inflation, how much that would be?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:08] Yes. Even though it's kind of meaningless. Adjusted for inflation, that would be about $6.6 million today.
Nick Capodice: [00:20:15] That's not really starving money.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:17] In the five years between leaving office and the 1958 act. Harry Truman's net worth crested a million a million in the fifties.
Nick Capodice: [00:20:27] But didn't Harry Truman have, like this hat shop [00:20:30] that sunk him financially?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:31] So this is the interesting thing about Truman. Yes. Truman Co ran a haberdashery in Kansas City, Missouri, from 1919 to 1922 when a recession sank the store. It took him a decade to pay down that loss. Harry Truman spent most of his career completely broke. He was also the first president to have a no questions asked, $50,000 a year untaxed expense account. That account became [00:21:00] taxable during Truman's own presidency, but he did not report it. Mr. Paul Campos His best guess is that Truman pocketed most of that cash.
Nick Capodice: [00:21:11] There's always money in the hamburger stand. There's always money in the bowler's stand. There's always money in the pork pie. Stetson stand. What? What's the funnier hat? Because let's see. What. What do you call the trilby? There's always money in the trilby stand.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:23] What's a trilby?
Nick Capodice: [00:21:25] It's like, I don't know. In my mind, they all kind of look like bowlers. [00:21:30] I'm going to stop saying hat names. This whole story kind of really has turned Truman in my mind to sort of a man of mystery.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:37] Whatever the reason for misleading Congress, he did secure pensions for all former presidents, including himself, although he was the only living former president at the time. And I'm going to tell you what else he secured after this quick break.
Nick Capodice: [00:21:52] But before the break, if you do want to help our book, sell a million copies, it's called A User's Guide to Democracy How America Works. It's Fun. It's illustrated [00:22:00] by New Yorker cartoonist Tom Toro. And you can find it wherever your books are sold.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:09] We're back. You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:22:11] I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:12] And today we are answering a question from listener Patrick, who asks,
[00:22:17] Does a former president have any special privileges like bodyguards or free stuff, things like that?
Nick Capodice: [00:22:25] And we answer.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:27] And we answer. So I covered the pension, the staff, [00:22:30] the office expenses, the strange case of Harry Truman's big lie. Next comes the widow O.
Nick Capodice: [00:22:36] Once again, Hannah, I feel like the language is going to have to be changed at some point.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:41] It's the 21st century lawmakers. We sent William Shatner to actual space. You know, maybe not a man might be president one day. Just saying. Widows of former presidents get $20,000 a year until they die, unless they remarry before they turn 60, which I think is tied to the fact [00:23:00] that widows in the US don't receive survivor Social Security benefits if they remarry before 60. The same goes for the survivors of fallen military spouses, and there are a lot of lawmakers out there who think that this whole remarrying penalty is outdated and totally unreasonable. But I digress. They actually have the same provision about not getting pension if they hold federal office or Washington, D.C. office. Now, moving on, the act next and this is important defines, [00:23:30] Nick, what a former president is and what a former president is, is someone who, number one, was president of the United States.
Nick Capodice: [00:23:39] Got it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:40] Number two, was not removed from office via impeachment.
Nick Capodice: [00:23:44] Okay. I'm glad you clarified that. I was going to ask.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:46] Now, you know, and number three does not currently hold the office of president.
Nick Capodice: [00:23:51] Right. Because former.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:53] Precisely. All right. Almost done here. Final thing.
Nick Capodice: [00:23:57] Secret Service. I've been waiting for this.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:59] Patrick asked about [00:24:00] bodyguards. Here they come. There's a pretty interesting provision in the former Presidents Act itself. But first, Nick, we need to take a look at the US Code, aka the compendium of general and Permanent federal Law.
Nick Capodice: [00:24:13] Just when you think you've gotten away with not making an episode about it, the US code shows up and reminds you it's got something to say.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:22] And what it says about Secret Service is that a former president and their spouse are authorized to have Secret Service protection for their lifetime. [00:24:30] Unless and here's that language about remarrying again. If that spouse remarries, they don't get Secret Service protection anymore, which, you know, kind of gives me pause because you don't stop being a prominent public figure and a former civil servant when you remarry. Right. You're still that person. It's just interesting to me. The Secret Service is also authorized to protect the children of the former president while they're under the age of 16.
Nick Capodice: [00:24:57] Okay. Well, I would I would like to ask you keep saying is authorized [00:25:00] to. So that doesn't mean that they have to.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:05] And that's where we come back to the former president's act, because that lifetime protection is something you can opt into or out of. If for some reason the former president and their spouse turns down that Secret Service protection, or if for some reason that US code provision expires like Congress doesn't renew it or something, the former president's act will provide up to $1,000,000 a year for that [00:25:30] former president and up to half a million dollars a year for that spouse, for security and travel related.
Nick Capodice: [00:25:36] Expenses and travel related.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:39] Expenses. That is what it says. And no, it does not specify what those are.
Nick Capodice: [00:25:44] To me, this is the most interesting provision because, you know, do you opt to go with this agency that has a long track record of protecting presidents, or do you gamble on doing it yourself with a million and a half or fewer bucks?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:58] Apparently, Nixon declined Secret [00:26:00] Service protection after being out of office for 11 years, saying that he wanted to save the taxpayers money. And I'm just not sure if he got any supplementary funds for protection after that. And by the way, the lifetime part of Secret Service protection was put on hold for about a decade in 1994 to save money. Congress was thinking like, after you've been out of office for ten years, you don't need Secret Service protection anymore. But in 2013, Obama signed the lifetime part back into law. The thinking there was like post-9-11. [00:26:30] The world is very different, you know.
Nick Capodice: [00:26:33] And also the former presidents are helping, you know, up and coming presidents campaign a lot. So they're always in the political sphere. Now, I'd like to ask how much Hannah and total former presidents cost us, the taxpayers?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:48] Well, that Secret Service cost aside, because that's a separate budget. A 2020 estimate put the total for all the former presidents at around $4 Million a year.
Nick Capodice: [00:27:00] You [00:27:00] know, that's not nothing.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:02] It's not nothing. But I think the question is less what it costs the taxpayer and more. Does the former president need all of this money, all of these provisions, when you can rake in $400,000 for an hour of speaking at a business retreat? Does the federal government need to pay for your office space?
Nick Capodice: [00:27:36] It's [00:27:30] tricky, right? Because you don't have to make 400 grand for talking. You just can if the people want it enough.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:45] Right. And an important unofficial role that former presidents also play is that of diplomat. It goes hand in hand with remaining famous and in-demand. Former presidents advocate for policy. They meet with important people. And [00:28:00] you don't want them doing that without a decent office. The presidency comes with perks even after it's over. That's just the way we do it.
Nick Capodice: [00:28:09] One last question before we go. To be president is to know information. Right? Like pretty much the biggest, sometimes most secret information that there is. Do former presidents ever get kind of newly released big information also?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:29] Do they ever. [00:28:30] I'm glad you asked. Providing a former president with intelligence briefings is a tradition that has a little bit to do with courtesy. You know, looping a former leader in on what's going on now and a little to do with current presidents seeking advice from someone who had the job before them and came to understand how the country and the world works. And that makes sense. You know, Jimmy Carter gets them, Bill Clinton gets them, George W Bush gets them, Barack Obama gets them.
Nick Capodice: [00:28:57] So that's all living former presidents except for one. [00:29:00]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:00] Yeah. The current president gets to determine if a former president receives these briefings. And President Joe Biden determined that there was no need to provide them for former President Donald Trump.
Nick Capodice: [00:29:11] Which I guess is a good reminder of why we should technically call only one person President so-and-so. There is only one person in charge at a time.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:20] Only one person with access to the White House bees.
Nick Capodice: [00:29:22] Beads?!
Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:25] Under Obama the White House carpenter installed a beehive and now there's White House honey bees. [00:29:30]
Nick Capodice: [00:29:31] Well, I feel like all that honey is going to the former presidents. There's always been White House honey.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:42] Okay, Patrick, I hope that answers your question. If you, dear listener, have questions of your own, do as Patrick did. Ask us to send a voice memo or email to Civics 101 at npr.org. This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with help from Nick Capodice. Christina Phillips is our senior producer. [00:30:00] Jacqui Fulton is our producer, and Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer.
Nick Capodice: [00:30:03] Music In this episode by Duke Harrington, Sven Linde, Val Flying, Xavier Roussin, Spring Gang, Pro Reese, Mary Riddle and Daniel Friedell.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:30:11] And if you just can't get enough of that civics one on one goodness in your life, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter. Extra Credit. You can do that at our website, civics101podcast.org.
Nick Capodice: [00:30:20] Civics 101 is the production of NHPR New Hampshire Public Radio.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:30:29] They're [00:30:30] willing to put so much money towards records management. Towards records, man. Towards records management. Whoa. Wow.
Nick Capodice: [00:30:37] You trying to make a gag reel for the credits?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:30:39] Stop it. There's a reason that they put so much money towards record management, right?
Nick Capodice: [00:30:44] Yeah.