Las Vegas Weekly

Meghan McCain stumps for Las Vegas

Because everyone needs an escape now and then

Let them play craps: Meghan McCain and Senator John McCain just want to ante up.

Keith Srakocic/AP Photo

These are words I never imagined I’d write, but here goes: Thank you, Meghan.

The Daily Beast columnist and daughter of Arizona Senator John McCain recently used her column to support our much-maligned city and to ask America for a simple favor: Please, lay off.

While the way she enjoys Vegas isn’t the way I do—think more blackjack, less Chinatown—McCain defends the Strip’s naughty reputation for a 20-something trying to deflect the sting of a bitter breakup or a senator just looking for a little fun.

“The American dream of rags to riches feels attainable the minute your airplane lands on the Strip,” McCain wrote in her March 15 column. “I love Las Vegas in a way separate from my love of any other American city.”

And Meghan’s not the only McCain with a soft spot for our city. In her column titled “Let John McCain go to Las Vegas,” she writes of a father who was a politician and a craps player … until a blog ran a photo of Sen. McCain at the table and D.C. took the image for a spin around the Hill. “My father doesn’t gamble anymore and he doesn’t go to Vegas because it’s apparently unseemly for a sitting senator to be found in a casino,” McCain writes.

I won’t try to argue there’s nothing irresponsible about gambling; of course there is. But for most people, it’s no worse than a few pairs of fancy high heels or a taste for Kobe beef. Sure, you could buy all your platforms at Payless and save the money for a charities researching a cure for restless leg syndrome, but where’s the fun in that? Once in a while, you want to put on something that makes you feel great. Or you want to pick up the dice, give them a good shake and the let them fly as a drunk tourist from Ohio spills his drink all over your pants. As long as your mortgage payment and kid’s college tuition doesn’t end up on the table—or in a freezer full of T-bones—there’s no harm done. Even for a sitting senator.

The real problem isn't with McCain or any of the other millions of people who come to Strip every year in search of a brief escape; it's with the people who don't escape—to anywhere. Their superiority is what scares me; not the idea that a senator might drop a couple hundred on the tables and then grab some late night In-N-Out on the way home.

“Let’s all jump on a plane and head to Vegas, baby,” McCain writes. “This is my plea to the American public, because the next time I go, I’d like to bring my dad with me.”

I’m with Meghan on this one. Welcome back, Johnny.