White House, White Horse, Superstitions And The Course

by podblack on November 4, 2008

One white foot, buy him;
Two white feet, try him;
Three white feet, look well about him;
Four white feet, do without him.

Yes, indeed: it’s true that within horse races and politics, including the camps of both Obama and McCain, there are ‘lucky charms’…

New to my blog-reading joys is the Australian women from ‘Hoyden About Town‘ with a post ‘I’m UnAustralian redux’ – posing the question about what people did today:

Who else is doing something else instead of watching the race?

In my tired state after running around for most of the day, I puzzled about it in two ways – meaning either the Election race in the US or the Melbourne Cup?

That response should probably answer the question; I paid so little attention that it only occurred to me when a conversation at the STAWA desk revealed that ‘the horse that was being ridden by a girl, didn’t win’. Oh, if you were wondering – apparently the prophecy of the ‘winner’ Headless Chook, from Australia’s Next Top Psychic, involved three different horses – none of whom even got a place!

Last year, I had the opportunity to ask someone about associated superstitions in horse racing. The woman in question had a father who was a trainer and she herself is a keen equestrian and still ‘helps out’ with the horses.

Apparently, it’s all about the ‘amount of white on the horse’. She mentioned how keenly buyers will look at the patches of white and where they are placed – particularly on the feet. Although she and her family are rather skeptical of such attitudes, it still pervades… enough that when she saw a picture of a racing horse with a white splash on its side she thought ‘who on earth would buy that?’

One site I found outlines some of the commonly-held superstitious beliefs, including the ‘white feet’ on a horse: Gray horses and horses with four white feet are considered unlucky in racing. And although the origin isn’t clear, there are people who still think it necessary to spit when they meet a pied horse, so as to avert ‘calamity’.

I wonder if it has anything to do with Revelations 6:2?

In the meantime, I notice that the news is reaching fever-pitch about the campaigns and I guess if you want to know about the superstitions in politics and the error of thinking that it’s only one side that indulges – feel free to check out how many professions hold superstitious rituals in regard – Political Punditry on McCain’s Magical Thinking.

And late in the rounds – yes, there’s been popular bloggers earlier this year that railed hard against McCain and then suddenly went ‘oh, dear, Obama…whoops’. But then, I covered that in my Political Punditry post in regards to not pointing fingers because every profession (and politico!) can have them…

…Then – I hear from my good friend Digital Cuttlefish that yes, even the camp of Obama Has Lucky Charm Superstitions:

COLUMBUS, Ohio—Barack Obama’s Ohio campaign manager has neither shaved his face in a month nor has he shown up to the office without his Columbus Clippers baseball hat.

Aaron Pickrell associated Obama’s uptick in the Ohio polls in late September with his personal hygiene and wardrobe choices at that time, so he kept the look. With only hours left in the longest presidential race in modern history, Pickrell stalked around a rally here Sunday sporting a lumberjack beard and a dog-eared cap.

The final days are a mix of strategy and superstition for those most intimately involved in the campaign. They fret over the precision of turnout models and early voting numbers and polling but also take comfort in the unscientific rituals that have provided some sense of control in a wildly unpredictable political season.

…Obama likes to say he’s superstitious, but he let himself speak Sunday night what many in his campaign ranks try not to think—let alone say out loud—for fear of jinxing it: He might be headed for victory.

Obama openly embraced superstition in January when he began correlating basketball with victory. He played on the day of the Iowa caucus, which he won, but did not shoot hoops on the day of the New Hampshire primary, which he lost. With rare exception, he has corralled aides, friends and occasionally members of the media to indulge his superstition on every primary election day.

Obama, naturally, will play basketball Tuesday.

His personal assistant, Reggie Love, will wear jeans, as he always does on election days. And Jen Psaki, the press secretary who has traveled with the Obama press corps almost every day since the Iowa caucus, will slip into the cowboy boots that she bought during the Texas primary—if for no other reason than she feels they are “lucky.”

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