American Thinker:
“… the word is rolling out that he’s “underperforming.” According to this delicious item in the American Spectator“
Like exorbitant speaking fees, book publishing contracts are one of those ways bribes can be paid to politicians undetected. Just ask Russia’s former first deputy prime minister, Anatoli Chubais, whose political career ended with that one.
So when President Obama and his wife Michelle Obama got a $65-million his-‘n’-hers book publishing contract, eyebrows were raised. It wasn’t a normal number. Oh, sure, it might have been justified by the likely volume of sales, some said. But Michelle turned her book in on time. And eighteen months past his deadline, Obama has not. Squirreled away in retirement with multiple luxury mansions to choose from, he hasn’t exactly been busy. Yet even with that kind of money at stake, he still can’t make a deadline, or even come close.
This kind of suggests that maybe getting the book from him in exchange for the cash wasn’t important?
Maybe. But now the word is rolling out that he’s “underperforming.” According to this delicious item in the American Spectator:
Michelle’s book, Becoming, was released by PRH’s Crown division on schedule in November 2018 and has exceeded expectations. Barack’s book will be released at least two years behind schedule with no publication date in sight.
“The delay is wreaking havoc with print scheduling and of course budget planning,” one publishing insider told me. “The enormous advance is starting to ‘raise’ concerns within the publisher. While Michelle’s book performed well, Obama needs to deliver the book and sales to make the overall deal worthwhile.”
So they really do need to get the book from him. And they needed it 18 months ago. And they cut him some slack by letting it go a year past deadline some six months ago. And another six months has drifted past. And now they’re getting ready to scream.
It’s not as if this should be a surprise to them. He’s burned publishers before with the same problem.
It’s part and parcel of being Obama, who, number one, can’t write. That was the conclusion reached by American Thinker contributor Jack Cashill, who had some pretty interesting circumstantial evidence that Obama’s mentor, Bill Ayers, wrote his early books well for him. See here.
