McCain's VP pick is 'rolling the dice.' McCain's been known to play craps for 14 hours in Vegas.

[flpoljunkie]

I think this tells us a lot about McCain's temperament--and it's not good. McCain passed over those who could pass the Commander-in-Chief test for Sarah Palin, apparently made the decision last night after a two hour conversation with Palin whom he had flown in from Alaska--after realizing he could not have Joe Lieberman as his VP. It's definitely a rash, shoot-from-the-hip pick. Pure McCain.

John McCain's Gambling Problem -- and Ours?

July 7, 2008

The surprising Time magazine piece this week about the gambling habits of John McCain (craps) and Barack Obama (poker) continues to reverberate, with McCain's much more avid and cash-expending pursuit drawing most of the attention.

A diarist at DailyKos is even probing whether McCain has ever filed the proper federal tax forms for gambling profits and losses. And Noam Schieber comments today at the New Republic's The Stump blog on McCain's visits to the crap tables in Vegas: "A few thousand dollars at a time? Wow. That's more than borderline unseemly, I'd say -- easily several hundred thousand dollars over a period of 5-10 years if McCain plays regularly. It's certainly a far cry from the $1-ante games Obama played in Springfield."

The Michael Scherer and Michael Weisskopf article at Time contrasted McCain's high-stakes and risk-taking gambling with Obama's cautious, cerebral brand, practically inviting readers to consider how this might play out when one of them is in the Oval Office. "He clearly knows that this is on the borderline of what is acceptable for him to be doing," says a Republican who has watched McCain play. "And he just sort of revels in it."

You may have read the Time piece already so here is an excerpt from an earlier Connie Bruck piece in The New Yorker, May 30, 2005:

The moment the car stopped at McCain's hotel in downtown New Orleans, he set out at his usual fast clip for Harrah's, across the street. McCain is an avid gambler. Wes Gullett, a close friend who worked for McCain for years, told me that they used to play craps in Las Vegas in fourteen-hour stints, standing at the tables from 10 a.m. to midnight. "Craps is addictive," McCain remarked, and he headed for the fifteen-dollar-minimum-bet tables. At the most obvious level, the game is incredibly simple -- players rotate turns throwing the dice, and you either win or lose depending on what number comes up. But McCain's betting formula makes it much more complicated. "Uh-oh!" he cried, as a player accidentally threw the dice off the table. "This is a very, very superstitious game," he said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/john-mccains-gambling-pro_b_111203.html