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By Root 326 0

the last president to follow Harry Truman’s example of refusing to “commercialize” the presidency in retirement was Richard Nixon. Like Harry, Nixon refused to sit on corporate boards or accept exorbitant speaking fees. His income came primarily from book sales. In 1985, he even gave up his Secret Service detail and hired his own bodyguards. In 1980, the Nixons moved from California into a Manhattan townhouse. The still-brooding former president often took brisk early-morning walks, but there were few shouts of “Hiya, Dick!” Instead his presence was often met with speechless incredulity, as if, one writer said, he had risen from the dead.

It was Nixon’s successor who turned the ex-presidency into a gold mine. Gerald Ford cashed in on his status as a “former” in a way none of his predecessors ever had. Besides the obligatory book deal, he accepted seats on the boards of more than a dozen corporations, including American Express and 20th Century Fox, receiving lucrative compensation for little work. He also commanded speaking fees of fifteen thousand dollars or more and worked the “mashed potato circuit” relentlessly, becoming the first ex-president since Theodore Roosevelt to earn substantial income in that manner. He even lent his name to a series of presidential commemorative coins. By the early 1980s, Ford was raking in more than a million dollars a year. Nixon accused Ford of “selling the office,” but Ford was unapologetic. “I’m a private citizen now; it’s nobody’s business,” he said. “In effect,” wrote historian and journalist Mark K. Updegrove, “he became the first to make a job—a very lucrative one—out of being a former president.”

Meanwhile, the “exclusive trade union” continued to grow. When George W. Bush took office in 2001, America had five formers (Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton), tying the record set when Clinton took office in 1993 (Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush) and when Lincoln took office in 1861 (Van Buren, Tyler, Pierce, Fillmore, Buchanan). As with Harry and Herbert, unlikely bonds were formed. Carter and Ford became such close friends that Carter once said they were “almost like brothers” and challenged historians “to find any former presidents who … have formed a closer and more intimate relationship” than he and Ford. The elder Bush and Clinton also formed an unlikely alliance, working together on humanitarian relief efforts around the world. Occasionally, all the formers have joined forces. At the dedication of the Reagan Library in 1991, the sitting president, George H. W. Bush, was photographed standing in front of the library with his four immediate predecessors. It was a historic moment, the first gathering of five presidents. The Associated Press later revealed that Bush and the four formers had cut a deal: A limited number of copies of the photo had been made, no more than fifteen hundred. Each of the five was to sign each of the copies. All agreed to sign no other copies, driving up the price of the photos they’d already signed. One autograph collector estimated the deal would net each man as much as $1.5 million. The presidents insisted the pact was only intended to raise money for their libraries.

In 1961 Harry was asked to sign a photograph of him standing on the dais with Hoover, Eisenhower, and Nixon at Eisenhower’s first inaugural. The other three men had already signed it, but Harry refused. “I wouldn’t sign a picture with that son-of-a-bitch Nixon in it,” he said by way of explanation. “He called me a traitor.” Then he cocked his fist as if to throw a punch. “This is what I’d like to do to him.”

All the while, the presidential pension package has continued to grow. Today an ex-president receives an annual pension equivalent to the salary of a cabinet officer—around $190,000. He also gets money to pay for office expenses, staff salaries, travel, and postage. It can amount to more than a million dollars a year. In 2008 the rent on Bill Clinton’s office in Harlem alone was more than $500,000. (Carter’s in Atlanta was $102,000. The elder Bush’s in Houston was $175,000.)