BOCA RATON, Fla. - When Republican presidential candidate John McCain talks to reporters about winning next Tuesday’s primary in Florida, he raps with his knuckles on the wooden table top in the campaign bus for luck.
 
Knocking on wood is just one of many superstitions that the Arizona senator has taken with him on the road as he campaigns for the nomination to stand as his party’s candidate for president in the Nov. 4 elections.
 
It comes, he says, from defying all the odds to survive as U.S. Navy pilot in Vietnam, during which he was shot down over Hanoi, beaten by a mob, and then spent more than five years in jail during which he was tortured.
 
“Under any rational set of circumstances I would be dead long ago, so why not believe in a little bit  of luck? … Anything that can be viewed as superstitious, I embrace.” he told reporters travelling with him on his bus dubbed the Straight Talk Express.
 
As well as rapping on wood — actually plastic wood veneer on the bus — he carries a lucky penny in his pocket, and a green elastic band on his wrist, which he snaps, saying “luck of the Irish.”
 
His close friend and political ally South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, travelling with McCain on Friday, smiled and said superstition is all a part of being a fighter pilot.
 
“I have not met a fighter pilot who isn’t that way. They live on the edge. They have to believe it gives them an advantage.”  

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Carlos Barria (McCain steps off his bus at a Florida airport with his wife.)