October may yet yield a surprise

by Lisa Van Dusen | October 16, 2008

The October surprise has become such a reliable element of U.S. presidential elections that the most surprising October surprise between now and the end of the month would be no surprise at all.

But with Barack Obama 14 points ahead of John McCain in some polls with less than three weeks to go until Nov. 4, with the Straight Talk Express veering like a runaway beer truck, and with few obvious traditional strategic, tactical or voodoo options left available to the Republicans, guessing what an October surprise might look like has become the new parlour game.

Will Rev. Jeremiah Wright stage a four-night Vegas comeback run the week before the election? Will the FBI, the CIA and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms announce during a live remote media availability that Osama bin Laden has been hiding out with Bill Ayers in the Roanoke, Va., Holiday Inn directly behind them?

Like the Great Pumpkin, nobody has ever been able to prove the October surprise really exists, which only enhances its enormous mythical status in the imaginations of pollsters, consultants, reporters and commentators.

The term October surprise was first used publicly during the 1980 campaign by Republican vice-presidential candidate George H.W. Bush.

The Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter, had been battered by the nightly national nightmare of Ted Koppel reporting on the unchanging status of American hostages being held in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Republican challenger Ronald Reagan's surrogates, including campaign director William Casey, feared an 11th-hour game-changing hostage deal. So Bush pre-emptively portrayed any pre-election release as a cynical vote-getting tactic.

SAVVY CARTER

"All I know is there's a concern, not just with us but I think generally amongst the electorate, well, this Carter's a politically tough fellow," said Bush, in all apparent seriousness. "He'll do anything to get re-elected and let's be prepared for some October surprise."

It was Casey who had first used the term privately (according to language guru and former Richard Nixon speechwriter William Safire) in 1968, when he was working for Nixon, to anticipate another October surprise that never happened -- a Vietnam peace deal by outgoing president Lyndon Johnson to help Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic candidate.

The 1980 October surprise, which is considered the granddaddy of October surprises, turned out to be a January surprise when the hostages were released 20 minutes after Reagan was inaugurated.

Allegations that Reagan's people had negotiated with the Iranians to hold a release until after the election while accusing the Democrats of doing the same thing were never proven but, if true, would make the first October surprise not only notable for its absence, but one of the most awesome examples of electoral psychological counter-projection ever.

In 2004, John Kerry was ahead in the polls on Oct. 29, when Osama bin Laden released what was basically a campaign commercial reminding voters of the 9/11 attacks and that he was still at large. Overnight, President George W. Bush opened a six-point lead heading into Election Day.

SCANNING THE SKIES

These days, the term October surprise has come to include everything, orchestrated or not, from natural disasters to a candidate's runny nose and the Republicans are scanning the skies and praying for something, anything, to land with a thud between now and Halloween.

It's hard to imagine what that might be. Maybe an un-American terrorist trifecta tape of Wright, William Ayres and bin Laden having brunch together on the Upper West Side.