Superstition ain’t the way

May 4, 2008

I’d heard that John McCain is superstitious, but I had no idea it was this important to him.

Don’t try to pass a salt shaker to John McCain. He won’t take it from your hand because it’s bad luck.

The Arizona senator also won’t throw a hat on a bed — it means death will soon visit the household — but he regularly carries 31 cents in lucky change in his pocket. […]

Mr. McCain has dozens of superstitions and rituals, many stemming from his days as a Navy fighter pilot, a notoriously superstitious bunch. He carries a lucky feather, a lucky compass and a lucky penny — not to mention a lucky nickel and a lucky quarter.

He almost picked up a lucky dime in January. As he was preparing for a debate at the Reagan presidential library, he noticed a shiny dime on the stage floor. He stopped to pick it up, but quickly walked away — because if a coin isn’t heads up, he considers it unlucky.

McCain even has a laminated four-leaf clover that he carries in his wallet.

“Am I superstitious? I’m that,” McCain said. “But I don’t think I’m alone there.”

No, I suppose not. I have a reflexive aversion to superstition, but I realize most people pick up certain habits and routines they consider to be “good luck.” Maybe it’s a lucky tie or lucky numbers, but I get the sense that the vast majority have at least some kind of superstition in their life.

But doesn’t McCain sound a little nutty about it?

There was this Dana Milbank item in the WaPo way back in February 2000.

If John McCain wins today’s South Carolina primary, some will credit his tax plan, while others will point to his war record. Those in the know, however, will attribute victory to the Spring Hill Lizard.

The reptile, believed to have mysterious powers, is the property of one Lanny Wiles, McCain’s trip director. Wiles used it to help Texas A&M beat Nebraska, and to force a golfing opponent to miss a $100 putt. He employs the lizard (which isn’t a lizard at all but a certain spell cast by wiggling the right pinkie) only on rare occasions, such as today. “We use it only if we’re at Def Con One,” says John Weaver, McCain’s political director and occasional witch doctor.

This isn’t the first campaign to honor strange superstitions. During Bill Clinton’s 1992 run, James Carville was known to wear the same underwear for days at a time when things were going well. But this time, there’s a new twist: The candidate himself is the leading shaman. He keeps on his person a lucky compass, a lucky feather, a lucky penny and, at times, a lucky rock. He assigns Weaver to carry his lucky pen — a Zebra Jimnie Gel Rollerball (medium, blue) — at all times. For added luck, he wears his magical L.L. Bean rubber-soled dress shoes.

“I’m wearing my lucky shoes from today till Sunday,” McCain says from his bus on Wednesday. At the moment, his pockets contain the compass, feather (from a tribal leader) and penny (flattened, in his wallet). When McCain once misplaced his feather, there was momentary panic in the campaign, until his wife found it in one of his suits. When the compass went missing once, McCain assigned his political director to hunt it down. Weaver found it, and it remains safe, knock wood.

I have no sense of how the typical person is going to perceive this, but I find it kind of odd.

He sounds more and more like Grandpa Simpson every day. “See, I was wearing an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time…”

  • Another demonstration, if any were needed, that McCain lacks the intellectual capacity to be president.

    He doesn’t come off as quite such a blatant dufus as the chimp, but I’m guessing there isn’t that much difference between the two when it comes to anti-intellectuality.

  • Is it time to put black cats in front of him, give him hotel rooms with number 13 or 4 and put ladders everywhere?

  • From GG at salon .com…”…John McCain’s only hope for winning is to ensure a similar disappearance of the issues which Americans continuously say are most important to them — namely, the disastrous Bush/Cheney economic policies and the need to extricate ourselves from the Iraq War. If the actual concerns of American voters are allowed to determine the election outcome — as they did in 2006 — the GOP has no chance. Thus, the only prospect for a McCain victory is to have the media flood the country with the types of childish, gossipy trash that has predominated thus far — lapel pins and Pledge of Allegiance symbolism and endless fixations on pastor sermons. That is what makes all the dark plagues which our political and media class have enabled — those images of dead Iraqi children and foreclosure signs and crushing collective debt and collapsed American credibility and a truly lawless government — blissfully disappear.
    The GOP’s hope that the media will do its part to continue to degrade our political discourse this way is understandable. It is, after all, Matt Drudge who rules their world. A lowly, Rush-Limbaugh-created, right-wing gossip-monger is the Walter Cronkite of their era.
    The Right knows it can rely on the establishment press to repeat endlessly whatever smears it spits out, knowing that journalists (a) find such chatter irresistible because of how cheap and easy and fun it is to disseminate and (b) have a built-in excuse for doing so: “tiny sideshows are what The Little People care about, and thus we oh-so-reluctantly must cover them.” …”

    Very superstitious.

  • McCain is lacking in critical thinking abilities and memory…hence his continued confusion as to who is on first or second in Iraq… or is that Iran. He is, in a nutshell, incompetent. His attachment to superstition is just one more piece of evidence.

  • Good ideas there, Former Dan. 😀

    And, CB, props to you for the Stevie Wonder reference. Sounds like our side needs to start playing that song at campaign stops!

    As a side note . . . it is a bit sad that former Florida Sen. Bob Graham was taken off of Al Gore’s VP shortlist as a result of the extensive, compulsive lists he kept, detailing minute daily activities such as rewinding video tapes or hanging up his jacket. Such behavior, strange but innocuous, is a major liability on the Democratic side . . . but the Republican frontrunner can have crazy superstitions that indicate an underlying lack of logic, and the press, as usual, gives him a pass. Sad, sad, sad. (I am of the opinion that, had Gore picked Graham for VP, he not only would have decisively won Florida, but he would also have hung onto Tennessee. Gore lost his home state– and perhaps a few other southern states– because his VP was Jewish, and the south is not friendly terrain for my tribe! A digression from a digression– if Gore was going to pick a Jewish VP, he should’ve picked Russ Feingold).

  • Isn’t superstition kind of considered by Christianity to be a “heathen” and “sinful” practice? Are you supposed to just trust your maker and not believe in little trinkets of luck?

    McCain is a heathen!

  • Along the lines of Ten Bears #7, I don’t see any substantive difference between religious belief and common superstitions. I’m not talking about thoughtful people who conclude after careful consideration that there may be more to reality than just the natural world we perceive around us. Or hope there is some kind of purpose to it all, and to the short lives we lead here on earth. But I am talking about all the myths and legends in the Bible for which there is absolutely no evidence. That would include the foundation of Christianity. I just don’t see why one should be ridiculed and not the other. I don’t understand why conventional religion is such a sacred cow in this country, and everything else that has to do with blind faith is considered foolish or ridiculous. What is the rational, logical basis for making the distinction?

  • Far be it from me to defend McCain, but on this one point I don’t really think it’s a big deal.

    Millions of Americans have incorporated superstitious rituals into everyday routines – tossing spilled salt over their left shoulder, skipping sidewalk cracks, knocking on wood.

    And I say this with tongue in cheek, but it seems to be working for him. He survived a POW camp, he’s had a long and successful political career, and now he’s the nominee for president.

    To paraphrase the words of Crash Davis, if you think you’re winning because you’re petting lizards or picking up dimes, well then you ARE.

  • What about McCain’s gambling? Sounds like he gets carried away.

    From a 2005 New Yorker story:

    “The moment the car stopped at McCain’s hotel in downtown New Orleans, he set out at his usual fast clip for Harrah’s, across the street. McCain is an avid gambler. Wes Gullett, a close friend who worked for McCain for years, told me that they used to play craps in Las Vegas in fourteen-hour stints, standing at the tables from 10 a.m. to midnight. “Craps is addictive,” McCain remarked, and he headed for the fifteen-dollar-minimum-bet tables. At the most obvious level, the game is incredibly simple—players rotate turns throwing the dice, and you either win or lose depending on what number comes up. But McCain’s betting formula makes it much more complicated. “Uh-oh!” he cried, as a player accidentally threw the dice off the table. “This is a very, very superstitious game,” he said. When his turn came to throw the dice, he picked them up and blew on them first. He had placed chips on the number 5, so (envisioning a combination of 2 and 3) he called, “Michael Jordan! Michael Jordan!””

  • This is the best America has to offer? The maverick that we’re supposed to trust? Oh, crap.

  • People are superstitious about things they feel little control over. (For example, baseball players frequently have superstitious rituals about hitting, which involves a lot of luck, but not about fielding, which is almost entirely skill.) If a powerful senator and aspiring president of the United States feels he has so little control that his life is filled with good-luck charms and rituals, that’s pretty scary.

  • This is a fantastic campaign ad opportunity, even a theme that could be developed over McCain as a whole.

    Highlight McCain’s superstitions, then switch to an issue. “John McCain’s Iraq ‘plan’ includes… . Good thing he’s superstitious. We’ll need all the help we can get if he becomes president.”

    Follow up with ads of the same format focussing on other issues such as his health care policies.

  • Sorry, maybe I’m just cranky today, but I could not give one rat’s back side about this. IMO, this is a quirk; it probably humanizes him with some. Who cares? Not I.

  • So let me get this straight. McCain is 71 years old. Over these many years he has accumulated a lucky quarter, a lucky nickel and a lucky penny. This year he found a dime that was not heads up, so he didn’t pick it up.

    Doesn’t that mean McCain has gone an awful long time without finding a heads up dime? Maybe we should start tossing dimes at his feet so he can fill out his collection of lucky coins.

    The wacky thing is that anyone knows about this collection of superstitions.

  • A McCain presidency would be a disaster for the U.S. and for the world, but I’m not too concerned about his superstitions.

    People (men) who spend their lives at sea are superstitious. This has been true for centuries. My fisherman stepdad and all his friends. Sailors, too. This then becomes a part of Navy culture which McCain got not only from his education and service as a pilot, but from growing up in a multi-generation Navy family.

  • mclame is abolutely screamin’, bat-sh@t insane. That is why they need a candidate like shillary and why kkkarl and rush promote her.

    They will then either:

    (1). steal election and use the years of discourse when bill was in the White House as the excuse and distraction to talk about election fraud.

    (2). settle for a candidate in shillary that will support the corpocracy and military-industrial complex anyhow.

    Either way – we get a continuation of rule by the same interests that brought us dur chimpfurher.

    We must stand up and DEMAND that we do not get ruled by a bush-clinton-bush-clinton dynasty.

    America was never meant to be a monarchy ruled by 2 elite families – this nation overwhelmingly wants change – shillary or mclame will be more of the same.

  • The Right knows it can rely on the establishment press to repeat endlessly whatever smears

    And shillary knows it too. Shouldn’t surprise anyone – ultimately, she represents the same interests.

  • I realize Mr. Benen needs to get his quota of McCain jabs in. Fair enough. Gramp’s left jaw is swelling and his right side could use some pokes too… But far worse than McCain’s pressed four leaf clover is McClinton reinforcing her “obliterate” comment today.

    Mark Kleiman is up to the task:

    http://www.samefacts.com/archives/hrc_/2008/05/not_a_gaffe.php

    Money quote:

    Seventy million people live in Iran. They are currently ruled by a religious dictatorship covered by a thin veneer of “controlled democracy”: the voters can vote, but only for candidates the mullahs approve in advance. Threatening to “obliterate” them because of an action by the government they didn’t choose means offering to outbid Hitler, Stalin, and Mao in the mass-murderer auction.

    Unbelievable eh?

  • Given his luck as a Navy pilot, the superstitions didn’t work too well, did they?

    There’s an old saying in aviation: any landing you can walk away from iis a good one. The fact McCain survived all five FUBARS makes him extremely lucky.

  • I’m quite superstitious myself. For instance, I refuse to vote for a Republican. I’m convinced to do so will bring bad luck.

    Silly, I know. But there it is…

  • We have a lucky cat. We found him as a shivering, hungry kitten mewing loudly from under a dumpster. We adopted him and he hasn’t missed a meal since. He gets lots of attention and likes to sleep in front of the fireplace when it’s cold outside. He lives better than anyone I know. He’s lucky we found him. We like hanging out with him because he’s so lucky. He brings good luck.

  • He employs the lizard (which isn’t a lizard at all but a certain spell cast by wiggling the right pinkie) only on rare occasions, such as today.

    Within the (Hagee, fundamentalist) framework that views Harry Potter as “pre-Satanic,” wouldn’t this be considered witchcraft? Even the use of good luck charms is frowned upon, I thought, as flirting with witchcraft.

  • I’ve got a two-tailed dime around the house somewhere. I’ll mail it to him. He’ll be screaming “WMD! WMD!!!” for a month….

  • “There’s an old saying in aviation: any landing you can walk away from iis a good one. The fact McCain survived all five FUBARS makes him extremely lucky.” – Tom C

    Is that like thanking god the your cancer went into remission ?

    Me, after five crashes and a stint at the Hanoi Hilton, I might start questioning my ‘lucky’ stuff. Just like why god gave me cancer to begin with.

  • Once you shirk reason as a method of inquiry, you realize superstition never killed anybody. It only transports some people to the spiritual realm.

  • CB… Next time you reference a song title, could you do so later in the day? “Superstitious” is a fine tune — and the reference was clever — but it’s now been rattling around in my head for the past 9 hours and I’m now posing a threat to those around me. If you’d posted this at, say 5:00 p.m., I’d have gone to bed after 6 or 7 hours and no one would would have been in harm’s way. Just a thought.

  • McCain has obsessive-compulsive disorder. I recognize the same signs I saw in myself.

  • I’m curious if anyone knows that superstition, is primarily an “Old Guy Thing” ?

    I ask because I can’t think of anyone i know, my age or younger,
    who harbors any superstitious beliefs, let alone that most of them
    wouldn’t being able to name any …

    (black cats?, a rabbits foot?… what’re you on about ?)

  • Bones, @35,

    Throughout my teens, I used to keep all the tram and bus tickets whose numbers added up to 21. Gave it up, at 23, when I moved to US and small-town (no public transportation) Virginia. Had to give up lighting up a cigarette as the means of summoning a lagging bus at the same time (and for the same reason). Never replaced either of the superstitions (in which I didn’t whole-heartedly believe in the first place but, hey, it can’t *hurt*). OTOH… Even at the tender age of 11, I doubted the efficacy of displaying the card of St Sebastian (all pierced by arrows), face to the window, to ensure that a lightning would pass a house by; even then, I was more reassured by a properly installed lightning rod, though all my little friends at the summer camp thought I was nuts

    So, no; superstition is not, necessarily, “an old guy thing”. More like an “immature brain” thing.

  • Let’s all scatter coins face down around McCain during his appearances in the general election race at debates etc. Hilarious!

  • As Jon Stewart said Mc Cain campaign slogan
    McCain “08”
    “The luck stops here”

  • This is a genuine mental illness folks. It is called OCD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. How about them apples…a truly mentally ill person just inches from the White House.

  • No wonder they haven’t released his medical records yet. This angry old man actually is crazy to a certain extent. Keep pushing this story. Maybe we shouldn’t push too hard yet though. We don’t weant the republicans to come up with somebody else. We need to keep this lunatic in the race. I wonder if he is afraid to step on cracks in the sidewalk. How funny is that, that this guy actually walks around with a pocket full of stuff because he thinks that is what is keeping him safe and making him lucky. Although when you think about how old and creepy he looks and look at that hot young $100 million wife, maybe he knows something that only other nuts understand. How do you think he got her…by rubbing 2 chicken bones together? Maybe she could loan me some of her lucky Vicodins.

  • sounds like OCD to me. I’d be curious to see how he behaves if his little lucky trinkets were “lost.” I’d also love to see how the public were to react were MCCain to have to perform any of his little superstitious rituals on live tv. I’m sure the media will try to paint it as a lovable affectation, but I’d aso bet it will turn off some old supporters & award him zero new ones.

  • “Senator McCain, is true you wear your underwear backwards on Wednesdays?”

  • “James Carville was known to wear the same underwear for days at a time when things were going well.”

    …that one’s going to leave a mental scar…

    There’s nothing unusual about having lucky trinkets and rituals, some of the stories do make it sound like McCain is a little on the extreme side, harmless enough though (though I’m sure his temper could make it a hazard to others). Still as other people have pointed out, once you get over the bemusement of the specifics it really comes down to a double standard. McCain’s superstitions are a sign of his down-to-earth-straight-talking-honest-john-rustic-cabin-owning-corruption-fighting nature, whilst any similar behaviour exhibited by a liberal would be considered part of the satanic rituals they do in their spare time.

  • Is the world tilting in it’s axis or something? My mother who is only a bit older than the Senator isn’t this strange. I think he needs a visit to a mental health specialists. I am concerned that the Repub. party ended up with this old man to lead the way to the WH. WTF????

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