Barack H. Obama delivered a speech to a Wall Street health care outfit’s annual conference.

The former president plans to rake in a cool $400,000 to make the speech. As you might imagine, he’s getting some guff from those within his Democratic Party base who contend that it’s insulting for him to earn the equivalent of the annual salary he drew while he was president of the United States … with just a single speech.

I happen to agree.

I also understand that the president is taking advantage of what the market will provide him for his words of wisdom.

Former adviser has a good idea

But here’s another option, which comes from Van Jones, a former Obama adviser who now serves as a contributor for CNN: Why not go on what Jones calls a “poverty tour.” It would help fend off some of the complaints the former president is getting from members of his base.

“We need a Bobby Kennedy in this country,” Jones said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.

Indeed, RFK famously took a lengthy tour of Appalachia before launching his 1968 bid for the presidency. Kennedy got to see up close the abject poverty that engulfs families in eastern Kentucky; he heard tales of misery and heard people’s pleas for help.

And, yes, Bobby Kennedy was born into privilege.

As The Hill reported: He (Jones) suggested the former president “go to Appalachia, go to Native American reservations where they’re shoving these pipelines down their throats and they don’t even have clear, running water. Go to South Central, go to the Arizona border where you have a lot of poverty.”

What would this do? Oh, it likely wouldn’t persuade the former president to give back the money or perhaps donate it to worthy causes. It would allow him to understand better the plight of millions of Americans who are unable to collect that kind of money just for making a speech.