Politics & Power Quote by Robert Teeter

Blame travels faster than any motorcade, and Robert Teeter is betting it will arrive right on schedule. The line is pitched as a cool bit of insider realism: the President's "political travel" won't just be noticed, it will be held culpable for "this downturn" - presumably economic, though Teeter leaves the noun vague enough to cover a range of bad news. That vagueness is strategic. It lets the listener project their own frustration onto an easily visualized target: the photo-ops, the fundraisers, the campaign stops, the literal miles that symbolize distraction.

The parenthetical is the tell. "And probably rightly" performs two jobs at once: it inoculates Teeter against the charge of partisan sniping, and it quietly legitimizes the coming narrative that governing has been subordinated to politicking. It's not an accusation screamed from the outside; it's a judgment delivered in the tone of a professional who understands how perceptions harden into "common sense". Teeter isn't merely predicting the spin cycle - he's helping spin it.

There's also an implicit theory of presidential labor embedded here: time is policy. Travel reads as absence from the workbench, and in downturns the public tends to want a leader who looks tethered to the situation, not airborne above it. Teeter is framing mobility as irresponsibility, turning a classic political asset - visibility - into a liability. The subtext is brutal: if the economy slips, the President's itinerary becomes evidence.