On Tuesday, President Joe Biden's motorcade brought Washington, D.C.'s main arterial highway to a standstill. The chaos ensued as Biden traveled to and from a fundraiser in Chevy Chase, Maryland, just outside northern D.C. Biden's motorcade caused multi-hour delays, exacerbating D.C.'s rush hour traffic. Indeed, some areas of the I-495 "Beltway" loop came to a complete halt.

One social media account summed up the frustration.

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This isn't a good look for a president who is running for reelection. Biden's campaign is surely aware of as much. After all, Washington, D.C., and its suburbs are overwhelmingly Democratic by voter inclination. Biden is only hurting himself here. Which demands a question: How did this happen? How did the U.S. Secret Service, which takes the lead for presidential security, cause such a traffic meltdown?

I suspect the Secret Service is not primarily to blame here.

For a start, that agency prides itself on the management of presidential movements on a near second-by-second basis. The Secret Service is accustomed to planning travel through congested cities. And while the agency is notorious for aggravating foreign and local/state police agencies with what they regard as its excessive road closure requests, what happened on Tuesday is rare.

Now consider that the Secret Service relies upon local and state law enforcement to conduct presidential travel-related road closures. This bears note because most of the worst slowdowns on Tuesday centered on the McLean and Arlington areas of northern Virginia. These road closures were supervised by the Virginia State Police.

Did the Virginia State Police mismanage and/or overly prolong the Secret Service's road closure requests?

When I asked the Virginia State Police about this possibility, a spokesperson responded, "The Virginia State Police traffic controls were in place at the request of the U.S. Secret Service. Please contact them for additional information."

I followed up to confirm whether the Virginia State Police had not exceeded the road closure windows as requested by the Secret Service. The spokesperson responded, "Any time state police receives a request for a scheduled road closure (i.e. highway maintenance, debris clearance, escort, etc.), time has to be added to the initial closure time to make sure all traffic has safely and fully emptied out of the designated area and any access roads."

What does the Secret Service say?

Well, I similarly asked the agency why the closures were so prolonged and whether it had requested such prolonged closures. Refusing to offer specifics, a Secret Service spokesperson responded that, "the agency does work diligently with our state and local partners to make every effort possible to anticipate and minimize potentially adverse impacts to the public and local communities during a protective movement."

It might just be me, but that response reads like a "we're not going to say it outright, but we're not to blame..." email. Reading between the lines here, it looks like one of two things happened. Either there was a miscommunication between the Secret Service and the Virginia State Police as to what the former wanted, or the Virginia State Police erred too far on the side of caution and thus brought the Beltway to a long standstill.

There's a broader point to note. The U.S. is one of the very few democracies that tolerate extensive road closures during presidential movements. As in the U.K., most foreign protective agencies close surrounding roads only a few minutes/immediately before a motorcade passes.

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The national security risks of presidential incapacity are significant, but it bears questioning whether the time has come for a more commuter-friendly approach to presidential movements. While the Secret Service loathes the rolling road closures applied by its foreign counterparts (rolling closures reduce a motorcade's speed potential and thus at least marginally increase its vulnerability), they do greatly reduce traffic congestion.

Maybe the time also has come to ask whether presidential candidates should reconsider hosting campaign events during rush hour! Regardless, when it comes to security, Biden, former president Donald Trump, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have a clear campaign finance advantage over their competitors.