Maverick Financial Planning
Jo Becker and Don Van Natta, Jr. take a long and in-depth look at John McCain, McCain’s passion for gambling, and McCain’s personal and political ties to the gambling industry. There’s a lot of material there, and much of it has no really clear political upshot and just illustrates some elements of his biography. But there are, I think, five key takeaway points from this.
One is that I think reasonable people can disagree about the best possible regulatory regime for casino gambling. I don’t, however, think that reasonable people can take the view that casino gambling is such a socially valuable enterprise that it merits special tax subsidies. And yet, McCain “voted twice in the last decade to give casinos tax breaks estimated to cost the government more than $326 million over a dozen years.” That’s not, in truth, a very large amount of money relative to the federal government. But ranting and raving against minor instances of government waste is McCain’s signature political issue, and tax expenditures to encourage casino gambling are a lot less justifiable on the merits than are expenditures to study bear DNA.
Second is that we see here that McCain’s “maverick” personality does seem to run pretty deep. McCain gets involved in stuff like this:
Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.
And good for them. But of course a typical marathon session of tossing $100 chips around on the craps table ends in thousands of dollars in losses. This, it seems, is John McCain’s personality. He enjoys the act of making high-stakes wagers so much that he happily does it in circumstances where he well knows that the odds are bad.
Third, you see that John McCain, like other legislators, has a close relationship with lobbyists for interest groups whose interests are positively impacted by his policy agenda. Also like other legislators, McCain tends to take policy positions that have a positive impact on the interests represented by lobbyists that he’s close to. This is a totally unremarkable situation, but McCain’s public image rests to a large degree on the idea that these general principles somehow don’t apply to him when, of course, they do.
Fourth, as he’s said before, John McCain is “divorced from the day-to-day challenges people have”:
Few people can afford a McCain-scale gambling habit, and even fewer can maintain to keep it up for decades without being driven into penury. But then again, few people are married to wealthy heiresses.
Last, casinos are, as everyone knows, in the habit of handing out various special favors, “comps,” and so forth to the high rollers who frequent them. When the high roller in question is also personal friends with casino owners, also a major recipient of casino industry campaign contributions, and also the single most influential congressional regulator of the casino industry the situation is an enormous conflict of interest. How much free stuff does McCain and his entourage normally get when he hits the VIP room at his favorite casino? My understanding is that the whole point of such rooms is to shower the “whales” with freebies to encourage them to stay.
40 Responses to “Maverick Financial Planning”
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September 28th, 2008 at 11:12 am
great post.
http://culturedecoded.wordpress.com/
September 28th, 2008 at 11:21 am
you have five point here, not three
September 28th, 2008 at 11:23 am
So I’ve finally started watching The Wire. Is it implausible to think that McCain likes gambling because he always wins?
September 28th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Remember McCain was forced to stay in Asia for years. Gambling is very popular in Asian cultures, therefore it is not his fault that a love for gambling rubbed off on him.
September 28th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Excellent post.
September 28th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Is it implausible to think that McCain likes gambling because he always wins?
The best question to ask is if he’s actually lost anything while a member of Congress(House/Senate). Do you think the casinos would let him leave pissed because he blew $1,000 or more during a night of playing craps?
September 28th, 2008 at 11:35 am
You liberals just love to hate our struggle Casino-American community.
September 28th, 2008 at 11:39 am
dj — Is this under the Sarah Palin foreign policy experience principle?
September 28th, 2008 at 11:40 am
The other lesson, perhaps, is that, as the long-term head of a Senate Committee whose job it was to oversee Native-American affairs, he could offer no economic solution to Native-Americans, save for more casinos. That fact is a little worrisome given the nation’s current state of affairs. What we need is off-shore casinos!
September 28th, 2008 at 11:43 am
“casino industry campaign contributions”: numbers please? Also, comps could just as easily be so that they “come back” not that they stay.
September 28th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Actually craps has the best odds in the house, if you play odds. I’d be more dismayed if he played slots.
September 28th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Renault. I’m shocked, shocked.
September 28th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
If mayors have the toughest job in America, how come they haven’t had those people on “America’s Toughest Jobs” be mayors yet?
I was discussing that show and we came to the conclusion that they defined toughest as only physically demanding. They should have an episode where they have perform brain surgery, do experiments at the large hadron collider, or lobby congress to bail out their failures for hundreds of billions of dollars. Wait, scratch that last one, that would be on “America’s Easiest Jobs”.
September 28th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
The other political upshot is to connect the meta-dots between this gambling meme and the ascendency of high-stakes gamblers on Wall Street. The super-excesses on Wall Street show the signs of the gambling ethos on steroids — risking huge amounts of solid firms core capital on high risk propositions for potentially huge returns or … crippling, demolishing lossses. This is the hyper-gambling mentality. Wall Street and McCain’s personal gambling jones are close to the same thing.
September 28th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Senator Geary for President!
September 28th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
September 28th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Re Mo
Actually, if one is a card counter, blackjack has the best odds at least until they catch you at it.
September 28th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
The other big lesson to draw from this article is that John McCain is a craps player.
Craps is a no- to low-skill game. Eventually, your results regress to the mean, which means the house wins, and you lose.
Anyone who plays a lot of high roller craps should not be put in charge of trillions of dollars of other peoples’ money.
September 28th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
“I don’t, however, think that reasonable people can take the view that casino gambling is such a socially valuable enterprise that it merits special tax subsidies.”
Even if it’s for Indian casinos (one of the two subsidies he voted for was)? Really? You don’t think a reasonable person could even argue that the USFG ought be in the position of providing moderate inducements for building operations that will provide tribal revenues?
Not saying the debate on whether casinos are ultimately good or bad for tribes is open and shut in favor of them or anything, but surely it’s a debate that can be had.
September 28th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
lvf:
I don’t think the workers at Hadron are colliding into each other.
September 28th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
I view the McCain late night gambling session as a way for the casino owners to pay him off under the guise of “winnings.”
It’s perfectly clear to me — you let the guy win and then ask him for favors.
September 28th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
A series of ads from the Obama camp with the “Maverick=Gambler” theme would be extremely effective, I think.
September 28th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
And tax expenditures to encourage casino gambling
a tax break != tax expenditure, no matter how fungible federal spending/debt is.
And one set of breaks was to commercial casinos and the other was to tribal casinos, which are pretty much arch enemies.
September 28th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
he well knows that the odds are bad.
The odds at craps are the best in the casino, excepting blackjack with perfect play (or poker if you know what your doing)
September 28th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
You betcha’.
Note that the “Gambler’s ruin” idea in probability shows why you will eventually go broke wagering against the house, even if the house is fair. (You run out of money, eventually; this requires only that the house has much deeper pockets than you do.)
McCain has enough money that he could keep doubling down until he walks away a winner, most of the time, but there should have been some evenings where he really lost big, and some people out there who know about it.
If the National Enquirer wants to branch out into something beyond Sarah Palin, there might be some ripe pickings here.
September 28th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
My understanding is that the whole point of such rooms is to shower the “whales” with freebies to encourage them to stay.
Whales are largely extinct. The method now is use sophisticated computer models to deliver an optimum amount of incentive to entice the casual middle class and upper middle class gambler. Getting thousands of hundred dollar stakes turns out to be much easier to manage than dozens of thousand dollar stakes.
If liberals should be against anything, it’s the proliferation of slots (and video poker) in areas heretofore unfamiliar with gambling. The machines have worse odds than just about any table game, they predominately suck money out of poor people who can’t afford it, and all the profits are captured by the holders of capital due to the automation. Table games, in contrast, are labor intensive – with union labor in most places
And then of course there’s state lotteries, which any gaming commission would shut down if run by a corporation or a tribe.
September 28th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
SLC,
There is zero chance in hell McCain has the mathematical mind to be a good card counter. Especially with current 4-6 deck shoes. McCain is way better off playing odds in craps. I do agree with Jose though, there’s no way the Maverick plays odds. He definitely plays the Yo and the Horn bets.
September 28th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I think the “I’m learning how to get on a computer” bit is a cover. He’s probably up all hours playing video slots. Or poker, where he wouldn’t have to look people in the eye in order to bluff.
September 28th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Actually craps has the best odds in the house, if you play odds.
He doesn’t play pass/odds, if you take the reporting on his playing style as accurate.
That’s to say, he plays the showy sucker bets. You can easily imagine him trying to impress the table by throwing chips at single-roll bets, hardways, two-way yos and the other shit, especially if there’s a young blonde holding the dice or dealing.
Pass/odds can at least mean you don’t walk away broke, but when you have Mr Most Obscure Bet Imaginable on your shoulder, playing to the crowd for affirmation, it’s hard to play the dull, conservative game and leave before the law of large numbers kicks in. As someone elseblog said, high-roller craps is really a game for sociopaths.
September 28th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Re Marshall
I believe that most casinos have a limit on the size of an individual bet which would preclude the doubling down strategy.
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