Surprisingly, card playing and other games had a great impact on the U.S. presidents, from George Washington to Joe Biden. Card games, played by a majority of the presidents, especially were a respite from the overwhelming pressures of the presidency. These games, mainly poker, honed the presidents’ ability to take calculated risks and enhanced the Chief Executives’ ability to bluff and read their opponents.
Several presidents used poker, specifically, to start their political careers. Here, Ralph Crosby, author of Poker, Politics and Presidents (Amazon US | Amazon UK), tells how poker playing helped put three presidents in office.
Theodore Roosevelt in 1898.
TR at the Poker Table
In the fall of 1880, when Theodore Roosevelt first sat down to play poker in Morton Hall, wearing his black dress coat, a top hat and pince nez glasses on a cord, the rough-hewn players at the table didn’t know what to make of this “dandy,” especially a Harvard-educated scion of the Roosevelt Clan, part of the 400 “best” New York families.
Theodore was there on a mission. He wanted to get involved in Republican politics and Morton Hall, a large room over top of an East 59th Street New York City saloon, was the headquarters and club room of the Twenty-first District Republican Association and just a few short blocks from his home.
At first, he was not very welcome at Morton Hall, as he had been warned by his rich, privileged friends, who viewed with disdain politics as the province of a rough and tumble crowd of saloon keepers, horse car conductors and low-level storekeepers and pols.
Theodore was not too pleased with the place itself, with its residue of cigar smoke and ashes, half full spittoons and a few dingy tables and chairs. The only appointments to break the dinginess were two framed pictures on the wall, of Ulysses Grant and Levi P. Morton, a Republican Vice President under President Benjamin Harrison and the club house’s namesake.
But Roosevelt persevered. He later commented, “I went around there often enough to have the men get accustomed to me and to have me get accustomed to them, so that we began to speak the same language….” It worked, and he was finally accepted for membership.
“They rather liked the idea of a Roosevelt joining them,” he later recalled. “I insisted in taking part in all the discussions. Some of them sneered at my black coat and tall hat. But I made them understand that I should come dressed as I chose…. Then after the discussion I used to play poker and smoke with them.”
Theodore’s courage, self-confidence and camaraderie especially impressed one man, Joe Murray, an Irishman and former street gang leader, and the second in command of the Twenty-First District Association—conniving to be number one. By lining up delegates under the nose of the Twenty-First’s leader, who expected his crooked candidate to get the nod for state assemblyman, Murray only needed a good candidate of his own. He decided Roosevelt was his man, and convinced the newcomer to run.
Politics Begins for Teddy
On October 28, 1881, the association’s convention was held at Morton Hall, and Murray surprised the top boss by nominating Roosevelt. The convention elected Theodore on the first ballot, and the 23-year-old went on to win his first elective office. As poker historian James McManus concluded in his book Cowboys Full, Roosevelt “had used poker and other manly ploys to raise himself up in the Republican party.”
Roosevelt would later introduce Joe Murray as the man who “started me in politics.” That start was the first step on the road to the White House. That road would have many twists and turns, but Theodore would navigate them with the fearlessness, fighting spirit, and risk-taking so prominent in the military man and adventurer he would become and the card player, success seeker and creative thinker he already was.
Richard Nixon’s Evolution
During WWII, the 29-year-old Richard Nixon joined the Navy as a Lieutenant (Junior Grade) and his life changed drastically. In his Quaker family tradition, Nixon did not smoke, drink liquor, use cuss words, gamble or play cards. That would change in the Navy.
Eventually sent to the South Pacific and promoted to Lieutenant Commander, he led a small detachment in the Combat Air Transport Command (SCAT). On the Island of Bougainville, during his first month there, Nixon’s unit was bombed by the Japanese for 28 nights out of 30. Many bombs just missed his bunker.
As in many wartime situations, much of the Navy’s SCAT team’s time was spent in what Nixon called in his memoirs “interminable periods” of monotonous waiting. They also sought diversions from the stress of nightly bombing. The boredom and fear often were quelled by poker games, which hooked the non-card-playing Nixon.
Nixon’s Poker Profits
Thrown in with some hard-living and hard-drinking Navy men, Richard Nixon soon was drinking and cussing with the best of them. Bored with lonesome evenings reading by himself, he began kibitzing the regular poker games in the camp. When he saw the amount of money being won and lost at poker, especially dollars thrown away by drunken players, he became intrigued. It was the money, not the cards that caught his attention. Nixon biographer Steven E. Ambrose concluded, “The games became an obsession with him.”
An earlier biographer of Nixon’s, Bela Kornitzer, in his book titled The Real Nixon, written while the subject was still vice president, said of Nixon’s South Pacific time, “Out there Nixon passed over Quaker objections to gambling. Why? He needed money. He learned poker and mastered it to such a degree that he won a sizable amount, and it became the sole financial foundation of his career.”
Nixon’s poker playing was very profitable. His South Pacific poker winnings are reported variously between six and ten thousand dollars. The most accurate figure, which he told his family, was $8,000, worth more than $110,000 in current dollars.
He used the winnings from the poker games to finance his successful campaign for Congress, his entry into politics.
Obama’s Poker Pals
With his Harvard law degree in hand, Barack Obama went to Chicago to join a law firm, where he concentrated on civil rights cases, and taught at the University of Chicago Law School. He quickly became involved in Project Vote for election year 1992, overseeing volunteers and registering voters, helping elect Carol Mosely Braun, Illinois’ first black U.S. Senator, and preparing himself for his run for the Illinois state senate in his district.
Obama won the primary unopposed. At age 35, four years out of law school, running against only token Republican opposition, Obama won his first public office.
In his pre-presidential autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote of succeeding in the state legislature despite the risks of a political career:
“By all appearances, my choice of careers seemed to have worked out. After two terms during which I labored in the minority, Democrats had gained control of the state senate, and I had subsequently passed a slew of bills.”
Of Poker and Politics
Obama’s entry into the state capital was not greeted warmly. The highbrow Harvard Law graduate got the cold shoulder from the old school Illinois legislators. But he found a way to earn the trust and friendship of many. Like Teddy Roosevelt—he played poker with them.
In fact, with fellow freshman Democratic senator Terry Link, Obama started a poker game, which became a favorite of an eclectic group of legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, and lobbyists.
In a 2008 The New Yorker article, poker historian James McManus concurred. “Perhaps realizing that both the Chicago machine pols and the downstate soybean farmers viewed him as an overeducated bleeding heart and a greenhorn, he decided to woo them with poker.” In his poker history, Cowboys Full, published in 2009, McManus devoted the book’s first six pages to Obama’s poker playing, in general, and to his and Link’s games, specifically.
The poker game, at different times played in Link’s Springfield home basement, a local country club and a lobbyist’s office was called the “Committee Meeting.” It started out with only a few players but eventually developed a waiting list. They played stud and draw poker for low stakes, a dollar bet and a maximum three dollar raise. A night’s win or loss normally ran about $25, and a big loss would be $100.
In Cowboys Full, McManus quoted Link, “You hung up your guns at the door. Nobody talked about their jobs or politics, and certainly no ‘influence’ was bartered or ever discussed. It was boys night out—a release from our legislative responsibilities.”
Obama undoubtedly saw it a bit differently. As McManus wrote, Obama “seems to have understood, as a networking tool, poker is the most efficient positive of all.” “The bottom line politically,” McManus concluded, “was that poker helped Obama break the ice with people he needed to work with in the legislature.”
Later, when Obama decided to run for the U.S. Senate, he reached out to his poker friends to gauge their support. Most felt the time was right and pledged their backing.
From Poker Winner to Political Winner
As Obama wrote in his autobiographical book, A Promised Land, “I began by talking to my poker buddies… to see whether they thought I could compete in the white working-class and rural enclaves they represented… They thought I could and all agreed to support me if I ran.”
Fortuitously, at the same time, Obama gained local and national prominence with his star-turn keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, a speech called so “transformational” that politicians and the media started calling Barack a “rising star” and presidential material.
The result: Obama scored a landslide victory over Republican Alan Keyes, 3,597,456 votes to his opponent’s 1,390,690 to become, at age 43, the junior Senator from Illinois.
To celebrate his victory, his buddies held a special poker game—meant to bring Obama some humility.
In his book on Obama’s political ascent, author David Garrow reported, “We brought him down to earth real quick, explained Terry Link, describing how they worked together so that Barack lost every hand.” By night’s end, Obama had lost all his money, but maybe gained a bit of humbleness. Later, U.S. Senator Obama, visiting Springfield, again found time for a poker game with his old buddies.
The next step was the White House, where Obama continued to play cards.
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