Photo by brianmka.

The last three mayors of our fair city have all been tripped up by exactly the same thing — travel.

Mayor Anthony Williams traveled. A lot. So much so that in his final year in office, Williams spent 31 percent of his time outside of the District, jetting off to locales as exotic as Istanbul and Johannesburg. Mayor Adrian Fenty did less traveling, though when he did saunter abroad, he often didn’t tell anyone where he was going, why he was going there or who was paying his way. (In one particularly memorable moment, WTOP’s Mark Segraves surprised Fenty at National Airport as he departed for an undisclosed trip.)

Now Mayor Vince Gray is getting in on the action. The City Paper’s Loose Lips reports that while Gray and his staff have confirmed that he took a trip to Tampa last weekend, they refuse to say much more. His travel partners, Councilmembers Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) and Michael Brown (I-At Large), are being similarly tight-lipped about the trip, which reportedly took them to see the training facility used by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The standing rule for perception management stands: the less you say, the more everyone else gets to say things for you, right or wrong. Just tell us why you went and who paid for it, and the story will likely die down this afternoon. Wait any longer, and you’ll merely join Williams and Fenty in suffering from self-induced media headaches.