The For-Profit Government Industry
Column: How President Obama’s friends profit from his policies
BY: Matthew Continetti
July 1, 2016 5:00 am
Got an email from Marty Nesbitt a few minutes ago. He’s a Chicago businessman and, in the words of the Tribune, the “first friend” to President Obama. Since 2014 he has served as the chairman of the Barack Obama Foundation, the nonprofit that will build the Obama Presidential Center and library, and it was to the possible architects of the library that his email sought to introduce me. “We have big plans for the Obama Foundation and Presidential Center, friends,” he wrote. Of this I am sure.
Nesbitt has a lot of plans. An article in Politico this week described one of the many business opportunities that await the Obama presidential circle, and how some members of that circle wish to capitalize on it, as the forty-fourth president moves out of the White House. Jaded observers of politics know all about the revolving door between the private and public sectors, the iron triangle of special interests, campaign donations, and legislation, the tell-all books and cable news contracts that await influential staff, confidants, and hangers-on of former presidents. Cynicism is a part of the D.C. dress code; on Veep jadedness and self-seeking are elevated to art. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t shocked by what I read in Politico.
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