From Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper – ‘Obama or McCain: Awaiting the Next American Southpaw’

Iraqis – like people in rest of the world and maybe even more – are watching the U.S. presidential race with great interest. According to this op-ed by Fateh Abdulsalam of Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper, one interesting fact about the two remaining candidates, is that they are both left-handed.

Referring to recent U.S. news articles about this, Abdulsalam writes:

“There were two commentaries in American newspapers that appeared strange at first. In one, The Washington Post said “The United States needs a president who uses both hands,” and in the other, the New York Daily News said, “we’ll need to replace the White House scissors and can openers.”

According to Abdulsalam – this trait may be a good predictor of what they’ll do in office:

“On this subject, there are other details of interest to American citizens. For example, they need to realize that soon they are certain to have another southpaw in the White House, and that whoever he is will be compared to four other left-handed presidents: Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton. If the American public was comfortable with these four presidents, then they should look forward to the new president’s term with optimism.”

By Fateh Abdulsalam

Translated By Nicolas Dagher

July 11, 2008

Iraq – Azzaman – Original Article (Arabic)

There were two commentaries in American newspapers that appeared strange at first. In one, the Washington Post said “The United States needs a president who uses both hands,” and in the other, the New York Daily News said, “we’ll need to replace the White House scissors and can openers.”

[It seems that Mr. Abdulsalam is referring to this article from The Washington Post entitled, A Vast Left-Handed Conspiracy . However, no sign of the quote: “The United States needs a president who uses both hands.” We were unable to identify the New York Daily News article in question].

The reason for this is that both Democratic and Republican candidates, John Mc Cain and Barack Obama, are left-handed. They write with their left-hands, eat with their left-hands and prefer to hold things with them as well. Perhaps the comment in The Washington Post, which said that the next President needs a pair of left-handed scissors, is meant to symbolize the fact that the next master of the White House won’t open anything for himself. Perhaps it symbolizes something else as well – which is that just about everything will already have been opened, particularly crisis, wars and projects that have been anticipated and deferred by nine years in Afghanistan and over five in Iraq.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the U.S. presidential election.