A couple thoughts: As President, no matter what you do, somebody benefits. Also, somebody will be willing to pay you six figures for speaking fees. Sometimes

A couple thoughts: As President, no matter what you do, somebody benefits. Also, somebody will be willing to pay you six figures for speaking fees. Sometimes those parties are the same. Presidents have no business accepting speaking fees from anyone. They receive a lifetime pension and various other benefits worth millions of dollars after leaving office. Even if these fees were accepted in good faith, they still have the appearance of corruption, which undermines public confidence in the political system, and cannot but instill in the corrupt the belief that for corrupt acts in office they stand to gain tremendously. My understanding is that the presidential pension was created to avoid the embarrassment of a destitute former president, specifically Harry Truman. Harry Truman conveniently had an opinion on the subject: No young man should go into politics if he wants to get rich or if he expects an adequate reward for his services. An honest public servant can't become rich in politics. He can only attain greatness and satisfaction by service. Further, Jimmy Carter rarely accepts speaking fees, and when he does he donates them to charity. I guess I just subscribe to Hanlon's Razor on this one. I think he should have advocate[d] for single payer, but I think it was a strategic error, and not a selfish manipulation of the system. This is certainly not dispositive, but I wonder what you think about Obama’s extraordinary intervention in the 2020 democratic primary. Right before Super Tuesday he worked (successfully) to convince Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to drop out, endorse Biden, and exhort their supporters to vote for Biden over Sanders. If Obama was so convinced of the need to reform the medical insurance system that he made doing so his highest legislative priority, and if he did believe that in theory a single payer system was preferable to the ACA, but made as you say, a strategic error in not at least advocating for it initially, then isn’t it somewhat curious that he would work so hard to ensure that Sanders, who was the only candidate who plausibly would have attempted to pass a single payer system, lost, and Biden, who not only did not support a single payer system, but said that if by some miracle it came across his desk he would veto it, won?