Is Barack Obama good for baseball?

By which I mean, now that Opening Day is finally here, is he good for the New York Yankees? The evidence suggests he might be. True, Megan McArdle – herself a Yankee in fine standing – warns one to be sceptical about the apparent ease with which a causal relationship may be deduced from a brace of strongly correlated variables but has she considered the startling fact that the last time the Yankees haven’t won a World Series title under a Republican president since the Eisenhower administration.

In fact fully 19 of the Bronx Bombers’ 26 championships have been claimed while a Democratic president sat in power in Washington. George W Bush’s tenure in office* coincided with a pretty miserable streak for the Pinstripers. Not only were no championships won, the Boston Red Sox put an end to more than 80 years of hilarity and won a pair of World Series titles (the sole upside of which was the entirely predictable revelation that Boston fans are as tiresome in victory as they were tedious in defeat).