Politics & Power Quote by Robert Scheer

There is a humblebrag hiding in Scheer’s rueful nostalgia, and it’s doing real cultural work. “Quality time” is a phrase borrowed from domestic life - patient, unhurried, almost tender - then dropped into the shark tank of presidential ambition. The move humanizes power while quietly indicting the conditions that now make that kind of access feel impossible. Scheer isn’t just reminiscing about proximity to history; he’s mourning a media ecosystem that no longer rewards slow reporting or private candor.

The intent is to establish credibility without sounding like he’s collecting scalps: he frames intimacy with future presidents as something “people can’t do these days,” shifting attention from his own résumé to a broader loss. The subtext is twofold. First, he’s signaling that he interviewed politicians before their personas hardened into brands, when they still had to think out loud to a skeptical reporter. Second, he’s hinting at a post-Watergate-to-digital arc where campaigns professionalized, access got commodified, and journalists were rerouted into press gaggles, talking points, and analytics-fed outrage.

Context matters: Scheer’s career sits in the long transition from mid-century shoe-leather journalism to the era of message discipline and permanent campaigning. His line carries an implicit critique of both sides: politicians who now hide behind media strategy, and media institutions that traded depth for speed. The wistfulness isn’t sentimental; it’s accusatory. If “quality time” with power has become an anachronism, democracy pays the opportunity cost in thinner truths and rehearsed leaders.