Since 2009, POLITICO has found, Bush has given at least 200 paid speeches and probably many more, typically pocketing $100,000 to $175,000 per appearance. The part-time work, which rarely requires more than an hour on stage, has earned him tens of millions of dollars. Relative to the Clintons, though, he's attracted considerably less attention, almost always doing his paid public speaking in private, in convention centers and hotel ballrooms, resorts and casinos, from Canada to Asia, from New York to Miami, from all over Texas to Las Vegas a bunch, playing his part in what has become a lucrative staple of the modern post-presidency.

Yes, fools and their money continue to be pretty easily parted.

He has talked to the National Grocers Association and the National Association for Home Care and Hospice and the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. He's talked to global wealth management firms and multinational energy companies. He has talked to motivational seminars and boat builders and something called the Work Truck Show. He has talked to the chambers of commerce in San Diego and Wichita. "Evil is real," he said at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, Texas. "Bowling is fun," he said at a get-together for the Bowling Proprietors' Association of America in Orlando. "History will ultimately judge whether I made the right decisions or not," he said at a gathering put on by the Advertising Specialty Institute in Dallas.

Good god, 175-G's for "Bowling is fun"? I am so in the wrong racket.

And give props to Mike Kruse, Tiger Beat On The Potomac's best hire ever, for the finest in deadpan humor.

Bush seems not to make as many foreign trips, either, preferring Texas and Mandalay Bay and the Golden Nugget in Vegas to the rest of the world.