Mac Daddy McCain loves rolling the dice (from Connie Bruck's profile in The New Yorker):
"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." [...]
Here are the key elements of the story:
- Wes Gullet is an old friend and gambling buddy of John McCain. They rolled dice together in 14-hour-long sessions in Las Vegas.
- Gullet was McCain's campaign manager and top senate staffer and is now a lobbyist.
- Gullet was hired to lobby McCain on the largest land swap in Arizona history, exchanging private land in the wilderness for valuable federally-owned land ready for development.
- McCain, who initially opposed the swap, changed his position and supported it after Gullett was hired.
- The land swap benefited one of John McCain's top fundraisers who has hauled in more than $100,000 for his Presidential campaign.
As Jed explains, this has "all the elements for a great story -- Vegas, gambling, corruption, visually compelling Arizona landscapes, etc. And it's a true story. But with scattered exceptions, the media has ignored it." He's sure not kidding. Could you just imagine what the media would be doing if this involved Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? Go read it all.
