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answered every beginner’s question
     from the guard (“What’s the difference between a Democrat and a Republican?”) as thoughtfully
     as if it had come from David Brinkley. When Connaughton asked Biden why he rode the
     train from Wilmington to Washington every day, the senator calmly told the story of
     the car accident that had nearly wiped out his young family in December 1972, just
     a month after his election to the Senate. “My wife and baby girl were killed,” Biden
     said, “and my sons were badly injured. So I stayed with my sons at the hospital. I
     really didn’t want to be a senator. But eventually I was sworn in at my son’s bedside.
     And I served, but I went home every night to be with my sons. And over the years,
     Delaware just got used to having me home every day. And so I really can’t ever move
     to Washington.”
    That was the moment Jeff Connaughton was hooked by Joe Biden. Here was tragedy, here
     was energy, here was oratory—just like the Kennedys. Biden turned his charisma on
     everyone who crossed his path and didn’t move on until he had made a connection—the
     sorority girls, the audience at the speech (many of the students attending for course
     credit), the security guard, the junior business major who had invited him to Tuscaloosa
     in the first place. This was the need and drive of a man who wanted to be president,
     and as they got out at the airport, Connaughton produced a spiral notebook that Biden
     signed, “To Jeff and the APU, Please stay involved in politics. We need you all,”
     and he knew that he would end up following this man to the White House. What he would
     do once he got there wasn’t clear, and didn’t really matter. The point was to be in
     the room, at the summit of American life.
    Before graduating from Alabama, Connaughton brought Biden (along with dozens of other
     elected officials) down twice more on paid speaking gigs, and Biden told the same
     jokes each time before giving his speech, which, by the third visit, was worth a thousand
     dollars. The last time he dropped Biden off at the Birmingham airport, Connaughton
     told the senator, “If you ever run for president, I’m going to be there.”
    *   *   *
    He didn’t immediately head to Washington. First he went to the University of Chicago
     Business School, with a letter of recommendation from Biden himself. It was 1981,
     and Time ran a cover story called “The Money Chase,” about the vogue for MBAs; the cover image
     showed a graduating student whose mortarboard had a tassel made of dollars. Connaughton
     had never had any money, and Wall Street’s magnetic pull was almost as strong as the
     allure of the White House. The whole point of an MBA was Wall Street. Just as it would
     be absurd to go to Washington and end up at the Interior Department, there was no
     appeal in getting a prestigious business degree only to work for a company like Procter
     & Gamble or IBM. Among his classmates, a job with a company that actually made things
     meant you were being left behind. Toward the end of his second year, Connaughton flew
     to Miami to interview with Ryder Truck, and the whole time he was thinking that if
     it weren’t Miami and a day at the beach he wouldn’t know why he was bothering. He’d
     had a summer job at Conoco Oil in Houston between his first and second years, and
     they wanted him to come back and make a career there, but the thought of starting
     out at thirty-two grand and moving laterally every six months from Lake Charles, Louisiana,
     to Ponca City, Oklahoma, was at least as dismal as working for a trucking company.
     Connaughton came from flyover country—he didn’t want to work there. If he didn’t get a position at
     an investment bank like Salomon Brothers or Goldman Sachs, or else a management consulting
     firm like McKinsey, he would feel like a failure.
    Connaughton didn’t forget about Joe Biden. Working till midnight in the university
     library, he