McCain channeling all his luck toward 2008 race

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.

Now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has converted his staff to his famously superstitious ways. Whenever anyone says something optimistic — especially about this fall’s general election — a slew of staffers join him in knocking on wood.

“That’s an ugly habit I’ve picked up myself,” Brooke Buchanan, the senator’s national press secretary, said with a laugh. “We were in Kansas City … and someone mentioned winning in November, and three of us knocked on wood. We don’t want to jinx anything. We’re all very superstitious people.”

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 had so many of them that we had to cut down. It was like a change purse in his pocket,” Miss Buchanan said, laughing.

A Candidate’s Lucky Charm

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.

Okay so most of you will not see this as a bad thing (or something that wouldn’t effect his presidency (if he’ elected)) but it is. Its more than just superstitious beliefs its a superstitious mind set. Its the mind set that there is these magical forces that could be bent and manipulated (by actions or objects) to turn things in your favor. Such a mind set can and ultimately will lead to mistakes some very bad. Such a mind set leads people to make mistakes and take unnecessary risks.

Found at Bad Astronomy