Left-handedness

Journalists have recently twigged to the interesting fact that both John McCain and Barack Obama are left-handed.

But, on closer inspection, this turns out to be less (or more) remarkable than it seems—most recent presidents, and even many major presidential candidates, have been left-handed: George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, John Kennedy, Harry Truman; Bob Dole, Bill Bradley, Ross Perot, Colin Powell, Pat Robertson, Nelson Rockefeller. Remarkable, when you consider that left-handers are less then ten percent of the general population.

What gives? Well, apparently left-handers really do think differently than right-handers. Most notably, they seem to be better at pattern recognition, at intuition, at seeing the forest instead of the trees. This might be very useful in politics, might, for example, give one an ability to detect and voice the popular zeitgeist.

Other big-name political left-handers: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill, Fidel Castro, Bismark, Napoleon, Bolivar, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, Horatio Nelson, and Mahatma Gandhi.

No doubt for the same reason, lefties are also overrepresented in the arts: Michelangelo, Da Vinci, M.C. Escher, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Anderson, Mark Twain, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Mozart, Paganini, Beethoven, Goethe, and so on.

Not to mention: fully half of those with IQs above 140—-Mensa material-—are left-handers. As was Einstein.

Though, to be fair, left-handers are also overrepresented among famous criminals and those deemed insane.

Or maybe in these cases they are just so smart we don't understand them any more.