The Great Pumpkin

We are into the Countdown. Only 10 days left until Halloween and the end of October. For political junkies, it also means the countdown to see what other "October Surprises" may occur. Linton Weeks discusses the topic in a Washinton Post article, Boo!? An Inevitable October Surprise. He says:

The October surprise: It's as much a seasonal sure thing in Washington as cherry blossoms and the National Christmas Tree.

When leaves fall and elections loom, the term gets tossed around more than a Manning family football. This October, too, is chockablock with shockers. Already "October surprise" has been applied to: several unflattering new books about the White House, an upwardly revised civilian casualty estimate from the Iraq war, the Mark Foley scandal . . . and October isn't over yet.

Originally the term meant some alakazam rabbit-from-a-hat trick that an incumbent party would unveil to keep its candidate in office. Over time the phrase has been bandied about and overused to the point that it now means any startling surprise from any direction that might somehow affect the outcome of an election.

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The earliest mention of "October surprise" in a Nexis database search of American newspapers is in The Washington Post in late August 1980. William R. Van Cleve, co-director of candidate Ronald Reagan's panel of military policy advisers, said that the notion of the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter, pulling an "October surprise" somewhere in the world to influence the pending election "has been nagging at some of us for some period of time." The rumored surprise was an invasion of Iran, which was holding dozens of Americans captive.

In October 1992, the issue of Penthouse magazine with the Gennifer Flowers interview about her relationship with candidate Bill Clinton went on sale. In late September 1996, questions arose about campaign contributions from foreign sources to the reelection campaign of Clinton and Al Gore. On Nov. 2, 2000, just five days before the election, a Maine television station reported that candidate George W. Bush had been arrested in 1976 on a drunk-driving charge. "Call it the October surprise a few days late," a CBS reporter said at the time.

In some years the October surprise, like the Great Pumpkin or Godot, is much anticipated but never appears.

There are variations. And trying to guess the next iteration -- sex scandal, international policy shift, military assault -- makes for a popular bar game. But in this era of muck-slinging politics with candidates "going negative" and "digging up dirt," a true October surprise would be an October without one.

For more on the October surprise, see Surprise.

Tags: Commentary, Politics, Humor