Richard Cordray stepped off Marine One in an overcoat, holding a brown folder to his chest.

It was Jan. 4, 2012, and Cordray, the former attorney general of Ohio, was about to fly back to his home state in style. He boarded Air Force One, bound for a high school gym in a Cleveland suburb where President Barack Obama would announce the wait was over: With Congress in recess, he was appointing Cordray as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.