Who's Got the Button...?

If you haven't played poker in a public cardroom, you probably have never seen a dealer button. But you've heard of it many times: another word used for it is buck. "Passing the buck" literally means letting the dealer button pass you by, so that the next player, not you, has the responsibility of dealing the cards — and the advantage of acting last.

President Harry S. Truman, well known for his love of poker, surely knew this when he put the famous sign on is desk, the one that read, "The buck stops here." There was no one else to whom he could pass the buck. He had the final responsibility. The sign also served as a warning to those knowledgeable enough to read it: "The buck stops here" also means "I'll always have position on you." As Doyle Brunson put it, In No-Limit Hold'em, position is ... well, it's the name of the game. It's everything. If I had position all night, I could beat the game ... and I'd never have to look at my hole-cards. (Super/System, p. 334) Tor Books editor Beth Meacham, talking about Tor's publisher, Tom Doherty, puts it another way: "Tom bats last."

There's been a lot of questioning of "where the buck stops" in the Bush White House in the dustup over the Niger yellowcake. The reporter questioning Scott McClellan a week ago asked that very question, and that was when CIA director George Tenet was the Designated Fall Guy, i.e. the player on the button. But then a new hand must have been dealt, because The button has been passed to Deputy National Security Advisor Joseph Hadley. If the Truman Administration's motto was "The buck stops here," that of the Bush White House seems to be "Button move!"

Anyone who can read English can take backbearings from both Tenet's and Hadley's statements of culpability; and those backbearings point straight at Hadley's immediate supervisor, Condoleeza Rice.

To continue with the poker metaphor, Rice is obviously sitting in the small blind right now, and the buck will inevitably be passed to her in the next hand. In the big blind is Vice President Dick Cheney (whom Josh Marshall, at least, thinks is the person genuinely responsible for the State-of-the-Union gaffe). President Bush is obviously under the gun, which perhaps explains why he's lobbying right now, with that little stack of "Missed Blind" lammers in front of his chips. Meanwhile, George Tenet, now in the cutoff seat, is giving off a huge tell that he's going to be moving all-in soon, and it wouldn't be wise for any of the White House players to call that bet.

Bless the nominee,
And give him our regards,
And watch while he learns
That in poker and politics,
Brother you gotta have
That slippery haphazardous commodity
You gotta have the cards!

—"Politics and Poker", music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick; from Fiorello! by Jerome Weidman and George Abbott