Baseball Crank: POLITICS: Left vs Left

June 23, 2008

POLITICS: Left vs Left

McCain and Obama are both left-handed, as have been every U.S. president since Ford except for Carter and George W. Bush. One quibble with this article:

The trait is also not exclusive to winning candidates: Vice President Gore is left-handed, as are past presidential contenders Robert Dole, John Edwards, Bill Bradley, and Ross Perot. A prominent New Yorker who flirted with a White House bid, Mayor Bloomberg, is a lefty.

I'm fairly certain that Dole started out right-handed, and only favors his left because of the war injury that rendered his right arm useless. So, he's not really a useful example.

Posted by Baseball Crank at 12:21 PM | Politics 2008 | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Hmmmm....

Seems weird that since he's left handed, he managed to play at the NBA level of basketball as a right hander. I know people do some things the opposite (Rickey Henderson springs to mind), but I've never known of another lefty who played right-handed on the hardwood.

Posted by: RW at June 23, 2008 2:24 PM

As the dad of a pure lefty, I am totally cognizant of famous lefties. As Noah would say, that George Herman guy comes to mind.

Posted by: Daryl Rosenblatt at June 23, 2008 5:21 PM

Another common characteristic of recent presidents has been having only daugters.

GWB (2), Clinton (1), Nixon (2), LBJ (2), Truman (1).

We all know who that trend favors this fall.

Posted by: Patrick at June 23, 2008 9:48 PM

That is probably the worst attempted cherrypicking of data I've seen in a long time, Patrick.

Your list skips GHWB, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Kennedy, and Eisenhower.

Since there are MORE on this list (6) than on yours (5), your trend DOES NOT EXIST.

Posted by: bensdad00 at June 24, 2008 6:32 AM

That is probably the worst attempted cherrypicking of data I've seen in a long time, Patrick.

Your list skips GHWB, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Kennedy, and Eisenhower.

Since there are MORE on this list (6) than on yours (5), your trend DOES NOT EXIST.

Posted by: bensdad00 at June 24, 2008 6:33 AM

How many on that list have had only sons?

Posted by: Patrick at June 24, 2008 7:58 AM

Bensdad -- I gotta imagine the liklihood of a family consisting of Mother, Father and only daughters is approximately 20% -- obviously you would try to extrapolate that percentage over the population of potential US Presidents (you could debate how to define that population for months). But lets say you get that percentage up to 25% -- now my sample shows that Presidents have had only daughters twice as often as the rest of the popluation. Sounds like a trend to me!

Posted by: Patrick at June 24, 2008 8:19 AM

If you're able to establish a trend from less than half the subject matter of very small sample size equals a trend then that means you also probably think Obama's policy ideas make sense.

Does Nixon winning in 68 and 72 prove your trend or does his loss to Kennedy in 60 disprove the trend? Or is that just additional proof that the 60 election was fraudulently won?

Posted by: largebill at June 24, 2008 12:57 PM

@ bensdad00

Besides the tongue in cheek biti think this post was partly attempting and lost on you, it might be good to compare that percentage (5 of 11 prez) witht he normal adult population, which I believe is under 10%.

This is not an attack on the Messiah 2.0.

Posted by: son of brock landers at June 24, 2008 1:45 PM