How greedy will the Obamas be once they are free to start making deals with speakers’ bureaus, book publishers, television broadcasters, movie producers, boards of directors, and other providers of part-time and episodic employment of the most lucrative sort?

Most unfortunately for the plucky couple, the last Democrats to leave the White House gave a bad name to the shameless pursuit of wealth from mega-rich interests.  So a man in his early fifties vitally concerned over his historical legacy might want to think twice about cashing in.  But the Obamas have demonstrated a love of luxury, perhaps the product of childhood, adolescent, and young adult frustrations over status deprivation.  Many leftists I have known have been deeply envious of the wealth accumulated by entrepreneurs, in particular, whom they see as greedy, mostly uneducated, and certainly unworthy of lording it over themselves, and enjoying financial security while they struggled.

Ed Lasky compiled a list of evidence of the Obamas’ love of luxury that is quite entertaining:

Obama is a gourmand.  He even commented on the price of arugula.

He was a regular diner at Spiaggia, which is very expensive. He flew in his chef from St. Louis to make pizza for him

Remember his Broadway night out after his election and how it damaged many people’s night out?

How many nights of “music” (if you count rap as such) in the East Room did he enjoy? There were so many it was hard to keep count.

Check out the “grim milestones” (The NYT’s favorite phrase for events it doesn’t like) at The Obama Golf Counter.

How about these photos of the Halloween Party for his two daughters and their friends form their private elitist schools? The Alice in Wonderland theme party during the recession – they tried to hide these photos and this party from the public.

Christmas!

Michelle’s Spain Vacation 

The Martha’s Vineyard and Hawaiian estate trips. Not unusual for Democratic Presidents (Martha’s Vineyard is safe liberal space for them). But Bush and Reagan went back to their ranches

At least Obama, thankfully, almost never came back to Chicago in 8 years.

So I think the Obamas will live large and need to comport themselves as the mega-rich do.  They already will be maintaining three houses – one in D.C., one in the Palm Springs area, and their mansion in Chicago (though that might be sold for a pretty penny eventually).

Probably the first big money will be publishers’ advances for books from each of them.  Then I could see one or both signing TV contracts or doing specials for serious money.  While he was president, Obama made a media event of his NCAA brackets in arch.  How much would a two-hour special be worth to ESPN with ex-president Obama revealing his brackets and discussing the prospects with sports mavens?

Speaking fees will be a regular source of income, too.

Neither one of them will lack for anything, ever again in their lives.  I suspect they will be living large and justifying it as an inspiring story for African-Americans.  

Lauri Regan offers this insight:

I think they’ll be very greedy but he cares more about community organizing in order to maintain his legacy and destroy trump’s while working to bring Dems back to power.  He also has to fundraise for his library. 

I think the Obamas will manage to make their wealth accumulation a matter of virtue-signaling, doing it as representatives of the victim classes of America and combining their personal wealth accumulation with fundraising for their pet charities.

It will work for their target audience, lefties and minorities.