The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House

by Ben Rhodes

The plane is both unlike any other you will ever be on and not as nice as you think. It’s nearly thirty years old, and the interior has the feeling of 1980s luxury: large light brown leather seats; wood paneling; beige carpeting. Bowls of fruit and M&M’s line the shelves that run along the side of the plane. The president’s office is up front, a spare room with a desk and a couch that runs along the wall; adjacent to it are a bedroom and a shower. A senior staff cabin holds four people in large chairs that swivel around, with a phone at each seat so that you can place calls that require you to push a button to be heard while you talk. A long hallway takes you past a conference room where Obama would spend so much of his time over the next eight years, sitting at a table playing spades with a handful of aides while ESPN played on a muted television. Past the conference room, there is a larger staff cabin with a couple of four-tops and a workspace where two enormous old computers are bolted to a table. When I turned one on for the first time, it coughed and moaned and took a while to boot; when it finally did come to, the emergency remarks that George W. Bush delivered when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 were still on the desktop—a reminder that we are all temporary employees and have to respond to whatever cards the world deals us. Beyond that, there’s a guest cabin, seating for the Secret Service, and then—in the very back—a cluster of seats for the traveling White House p...