First: This whole obsession with all the Democratic candidates taking private planes is dumb. Until I can read in the press that the Republican candidates (who have all professed to be concerned about the environment) are using bicycles or rickshaws, it's just partisan posturing.

Second: We need to realize that a presidential candidate sometimes needs to be in seven places at once, and it's entirely possible that private planes are the only answer to that need. A candidate taking any other mode of transportation would be highly disruptive and would piss people off...the same people whose votes those candidates are asking for. Telling a crowd of people that "your flight is delayed because candidate X has exclusive use of the runway" just lost candidate X all those votes. The days of campaign trains and buses are long gone. It would be nice if candidates for president could take commercial flights or trains, but that's not the reality, unfortunately...and even if it were logistically possible, the Secret Service would probably veto the idea.