As of 2008, the United States has had seven left-handed Presidents in its history, and since both the Republican and Democratic nominees for President in 2008 were left-handed, the number is slated to become eight. Incidentally, only two of those Presidents have been Democratic, for those who were planning on making cracks about being on the “left.”

In chronological order, the left-handed Presidents are: James Garfield (1881), Herbert Hoover (1929-1933), Harry Truman (1945-1953), Gerald Ford (1974-1977), Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), George Bush Sr. (1989-1993), and Bill Clinton (1993-2001). It is intriguing to note that the United States was in the control of a southpaw for 20 years from 1981-2001, considering how rare left-handed people are in the general population.

There are some disputes about the list of left-handed Presidents. Prior to the 20th century, left-handedness was regarded as a negative character trait, and it is possible that more presidents prior to the 20th century were left-handed, but they concealed that fact. “Retraining” of left-handed individuals was also very common well through the 20th century, with young children being forced to write with their right hands, even if their left hands were dominant.

For those interested in Presidential trivia, two of the left-handed Presidents, Garfield and Reagan, experienced assassination attempts. Garfield probably would have survived with the benefit of modern medicine, but he had the misfortune to be shot in 1881, dying only after weeks of infection and misery. Reagan survived, as the bullet barely missed his heart. Truman and Ford were both Vice-Presidents who succeeded to the office of the Presidency, after the death of President Roosevelt in 1945 and the resignation of President Nixon in 1974. Ford was the only President who never won a national election, as he was appointed to the office of the Vice-Presidency after Nixon's original running mate resigned from the office in disgrace.

Hoover is sometimes left off lists of left-handed Presidents, making his left-handed status unclear, and Reagan started out left-handed as a child, but later learned to write with this right hand, making his inclusion questionable as well. Given that an estimated seven to 10 percent of the population is left-handed, eight of 44 Presidents is a pretty remarkable statistic, and a cause for pride among some members of the left-handed community. Left-handed individuals are supposedly more creative and articulate than their right-handed counterparts, due to differences in brain function which have been explored in numerous studies, and this may have something to do with the high number of left-handed Presidents.