The Audacity of Hope

Chapter Five
Opportunity
ONE THING ABOUT being a U.S. senator—you fly a lot. There are the flights back
and forth from Washington at least once a week. There are the trips to other states to
deliver a speech, raise money, or campaign for your colleagues. If you represent a big
state like Illinois, there are flights upstate or downstate, to attend town meetings or
ribbon cuttings and to make sure that the folks don’t think you’ve forgotten them.
Most of the time I fly commercial and sit in coach, hoping for an aisle or window seat
and crossing my fingers that the guy in front of me doesn’t want to recline.
But there are times when—because I’m making multiple stops on a West Coast swing,
say, or need to get to another city after the last commercial flight has left—I fly on a
private jet. I hadn’t been aware of this option at first, assuming the cost would be
prohibitive. But during the campaign, my staff explained that under Senate rules, a
senator or candidate could travel on someone else’s jet and just pay the equivalent of a
first-class airfare. After looking at my campaign schedule and thinking about all the
time I would save, I decided to give private jets a try.
It turns out that the flying experience is a good deal different on a private jet. Private
jets depart from privately owned and managed terminals, with lounges that feature big
soft couches and big-screen TVs and old aviation photographs on the walls. The
restrooms are generally empty and spotless, and have those mechanical shoe-shine
machines and mouthwash and mints in a bowl. There’s no sense of hurriedness at these
terminals; the plane is waiting for you if you’re late, ready for you if you’re early. A lot
of times you can bypass the lounge altogether and drive your car straight onto the
tarmac. Otherwise the pilots will greet you in the terminal, take your bags, and walk you
out to the plane.
And the planes, well, they’re nice. The first time I took such a flight, I was on a Citation
X, a sleek, compact, shiny machine with wood paneling and leather seats that you could
pull together to make a bed anytime you decided you wanted a nap. A shrimp salad and
cheese plate occupied the seat behind me; up front, the minibar was fully stocked. The
pilots hung up my coat, offered me my choice of newspapers, and asked me if I was
comfortable. I was.
Then the plane took off, its Rolls-Royce engines gripping the air the way a well-made
sports car grips the road. Shooting through the clouds, I turned on the small TV monitor
in front of my seat. A map of the United States appeared, with the image of our plane
tracking west, along with our speed, our altitude, our time to destination, and the
temperature outside. At forty thousand feet, the plane leveled off, and I looked down at
the curving horizon and the scattered clouds, the geography of the earth laid out before
me—first the flat, checkerboard fields of western Illinois, then the python curves of the
Mississippi, then more farmland and ranch land and eventually the jagged Rockies, still
snow-peaked, until the sun went down and the orange sky narrowed to a thin red line
that was finally consumed by night and stars and moon.