The first was the civic-minded one, seated on a stage in Chicago, where he talked about the importance of community organizing and told a student audience
that he had succeeded in politics because people believed “my values were not so different from theirs.”
The other was the one set to cash a $400,000 check from Wall Street — the same amount as his yearly salary during his time in the White
House — when he delivers a speech in September at a health care conference run by Cantor Fitzgerald, a trading and investment firm.
Mr. Obama will spend most of his post-presidency, Mr. Schultz said, “training and elevating a new generation of political leaders in America.”
Throughout his years in the White House, Mr. Obama championed the problems of the poor even as
he showed an affinity for Hollywood superstars, elite artists and technology billionaires.
The spokesman, Eric Schultz, noted that Cantor Fitzgerald is a Wall Street firm but pointed out in a statement
that as a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama raised money from Wall Street and went on to aggressively regulate it.
