Opinion: For southpaws Barack Obama and John McCain, the commonalities mount

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Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama will be inclined to dwell on this, but different as they are in so many obvious ways, similarities between the two are beginning to stack up.

Both are left-handed (indeed, as the New York Sun’s Russell Berman recently detailed, it now appears certain that for the fifth time in the last 35 years, a southpaw will be president).

Both swear by the Ernest Hemingway novel in which the flawed American hero volunteers to fight in the Spanish Civil War, ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls.’ [Thanks, commenters, for correcting the title. Mea culpa, mea culpa.]

And both have an affinity for lucky charms.

McCain’s superstitious nature long has been remarked upon; The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote this piece about it during the 2000 Republican primary race.

Obama’s comparable proclivity gained attention last week, when while campaigning in New Mexico he pulled out a pocketful of trinkets to show some voters. In doing so, he struck an international chord.

Obama’s tokens included a small monkey king replica, and in India they took notice. As a Sunday post in the Chicago Tribune’s Swamp blog noted, ‘the charm is presumed to be an image of Hanuman, Hinduism’s popular monkey god.’

Nor does the tale end there, as the item relates; check it out here.

-- Don Frederick