McCain… Obama – They Like To Gamble

I read an interesting article in Time magazine by Michael Scherer and Michael Weisskoff.

It seems Presidential nominees John McCain and Barack Obama are gamblers and that gaming for the two, the authors suggest, may go beyond just a favorite pastime or hobby and seems to be a component of who they are and how they got where they are in the political arena. The choice of the games they prefer may also shed some light on the nature and character of each person the authors believe.

Political leaders who have gambled is nothing really new, as the authors pointed out, as Andrew Jackson owned fighting cocks and raced horses. Richard Nixon helped finance his first congressional race with his World War II poker winnings. Teddy Roosevelt noted that the professional gamblers he knew "usually made good soldiers."

But the games of chance that the two candidates have participated in and the level at which they have played go beyond the gaming by these historical figures.

They state that, “For Obama, weekly poker games with lobbyists and fellow state senators helped cement his position as a rising star in Illinois politics. For McCain, jaunts to the craps table helped burnish his image as a political hot dog who relished the thrill of a good fight, even if the risk of failure was high.”

The article, which can be found here, goes deeper into the these guys and their respective vices and I found it interesting how they are pretty much like the average joe. We in the public tend to hold these leaders to a much higher standard than the everyday working guy but end the end they are just human like the rest of us.