In the hotel where I’m staying, the list of organizations meeting here for a conference today includes “U.S. Census Bureau.” Cool, the whole Census Bureau’s here! This struck me as very funny for some reason. “All right, sir, we’re just going to need to know how many attendees you expect, how many want the chicken, and how many want the salmon. Can you get me that by the end of the day? Wait, what am I saying? Of course you can, you’re the Census Bureau!”

Breaking! The next President of the United States will be…left-handed! For some reason I’d missed this little tidbit until now: just as in the 1992 election, when Clinton, Bush 41, and Perot were all left-handed, so are both Senators Obama (“There isn’t a left-handed and a right-handed America! There’s just a United States of America!”) and McCain (“My friends, there were five years of my life when I was unable to use either hand!”)

Tuesday’s election will end eight years of tyrannical right-handed rule in this nation: Dubya is a rightie, but he and Carter have been the only two right-handed gaps in the left-handed presidency since Nixon resigned! (If you accept many biographers’ contention, based on photographic evidence, that Reagan was born a leftie but, uh, moved to the right later in life.) If you asked moderate or independent voters who America’s two worst presidents since Watergate were, they might very well tell you it was the only two right-handers. Coincidence? As a left-hander, I’m required to say no.

People sometimes comment on my being left-handed when they see me at book signings and such. “See! I knew he’d be a lefty!” I always ask if they themselves are left-handed; they always are. Only left-handers are obsessed enough with their minority status to make a point of it, I guess. (Alternately: only left-handers are so keenly observant as to notice!)