The action was picking up late Friday afternoon at Caesars Palace. Gamblers took their seats along the slot machines, and the pai gao and blackjack tables were filling.
The craps tables teemed with players standing elbow-to-elbow. Nearly lost among them was a white-haired gent in a navy blazer and light blue oxford shirt open at the collar.
Although he just wanted to blend in with his fellow gamblers, his was more than just a face in the crowd. Hunters of political trivia and textbook hypocrisy would have been intrigued to find Arizona Sen. John McCain - the man who manages to play both sides of America's gaming debate like a hybrid of Nick the Greek and Billy Sunday - angling for a dice roll with two fistfuls of chips.
I watched the senator smile politely as Caesars marketing and floor personnel greeted him. One offered her condolences on his recent loss.
Not at the dice table, but in the presidential primary to George W. Bush.
Another employee joked that perhaps McCain would get lucky enough to win a little cash for the next campaign. His candidacy is proof that it takes more than a few stacks of green cheques to run for the White House.
McCain seemed to be enjoying himself. Perhaps not as much as the boozy lout who kept barking orders to the dice, but then a man considered one of the most powerful in American politics has an image to protect.
It's an image that doesn't benefit by touting prohibition of aspects of legalized gambling like a drum-banging suffragette with one hand and pitching the galloping dominoes with the other.
Frankly, I was a little confused.
Perhaps in part because I hadn't ruled out voting for him if he had managed to knock off Bush and win the GOP nomination, I was keenly interested in knowing why a Vietnam War POW who seemed so genuine on so many issues justified being such a gargantuan hypocrite on the subject of legalized gambling.
Alas, my interview request was rebuffed by a McCain staffer, who said the senator was in town simply to relax and play a little. So at least McCain wasn't here on a fact-finding mission deep into the dark heart of the green-felt jungle.
I had to smile as I wracked my brain to think of one other time a U.S. senator, who wasn't under indictment, declined the opportunity to get his name in the newspaper. But McCain had picked a good place for it. At last check, Las Vegas caters to about 33 million visitors a year.
Surely in a crowd that big there also were plenty of Sunday preachers who had ditched the congregation for a taste of corporate sin and well-regulated debauchery. But only they would rank with McCain on the hypocrite scale.
It would have been rude to elbow in next to the senator -- I might have spilled his chips or his dice strategy -- but I did get close enough to notice he didn't appear to need a copy of "Dice Shooting for Beginners."
As I watched, I wondered whether this was the same McCain who, while on the campaign trail, had come out against gambling in South Carolina at a time that state was weighing whether to keep legal video poker machines.
Or was this the McCain who had found his way to Las Vegas to accept juicy contributions from casino bosses?
Then again, maybe this was the McCain who has been leading the charge in Washington to ban college sports betting despite the knowledge that the only place in the country the activity is regulated and legal is Nevada. Forty-nine other states illegally book college sporting events with virtual impunity; McCain's efforts target the only place anyone keeps an eye on the bookies.
He loves gambling, he hates gambling.
Why, he's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. High Stakes.
In truth, McCain is like a lot of Americans when it comes to gambling: We gamble, but don't want to be called gamblers. As much as the brain trust at Gaming Inc. would like us to believe otherwise, many Americans still fail to believe the spread of gambling is actually good for the nation.
For all its controversy, gambling is interwoven in the fabric of the nation -- almost as much as the political hypocrite.
I wanted to ask the good senator about that, too, but the dice table was too crowded.
(John L. Smith's column appears Wednesdays in the Nevada Appeal. Reach him at (702)383-0295 or Smith@lasvegas.com.)
