The price is high for Hillary

Democrats are becoming anxious about the kind of candidate Hillary Clinton may turn out to be. Photo / AP

Easy going Hillary Clinton is not when it comes to public appearances. Just ask the University of Buffalo, which last year not only paid her US$275,000 ($320,000) for a speech on its campus but also had to submit to a laundry list of finicky demands to make her happy. Could they tape her words that were costing so dearly, for instance? They could not.

A first-ever glimpse of the diva-like conditions routinely set by the former First Lady is offered in the contract that was struck between her agent, the Harry Walker Agency, and the university, and made public this week, following a Freedom of Information request by the Public Accountability Initiative, a public-interest group based in New York.

The fussiness of her stipulations coupled with the size of the fee - though the contract notes the full sum was to be passed on to the Clinton Foundation, the philanthropic organisation set up by her husband, the former President - will compound a growing perception that Mrs Clinton's alleged empathy for the common man and woman takes a distant second place in her heart to imperious self-preening and harvesting embarrassing quantities of cash.

This particular speaking contract, one of scores she has benefited from since leaving the State Department 18 months ago, says for example that she must have final approval over the "sets, backdrops, banners, scenery, logos, settings, etc", and the topic and length of her address were at her "sole discretion".

Additionally she required that the university provide her with "presidential glass panel teleprompter and a qualified operator".

Perhaps oddest was the requirement that her hosts pay an additional US$1000 to have a trained stenographer on hand to transcribe the speech as she delivers it so that she could have an accurate, verbatim version for her records, while at the same time the university would not be permitted any such copy for its archives. Mrs Clinton remains far and away the front-runner to take her party's presidential nomination two years hence, but some Democrats are becoming anxious about the kind of candidate she may turn out to be.

That all things Clinton and cash have suddenly become a topic of fervent debate is largely the fault of the former First Lady herself who lamented to an ABC TV interviewer that she and her husband had left the White House "dead broke".

It was a remark that to many observers, including in her own party, seemed as politically inept as it was distasteful.

By some estimates, Hillary and Bill have made about US$100 million in speaking fees alone, charging between US$200,000 and US$700,000 per appearance.

Even their daughter, Chelsea, has joined the family business, commanding US$75,000 for each speech. Until recently, NBC News had been paying her US$600,000 a year as a very occasional feature correspondent. That allegedly worked out at US$25,000 per minute on air.

Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist, pondered: "The Clintons keep acting as though all they care about is selfless public service. So why does it keep coming back to gross money grabs?"

- Independent