Campaign Relief: The October Surprise

By: John Hanchette This is the last full week in September. That means it's time to write about the October Surprise.

When I first heard the term while covering the 1980 campaign, during Ronald Reagan's successful effort to unseat incumbent President Jimmy Carter, I was clueless. I thought it might be some exquisitely rich dessert at a German beer festival.

Soon, I learned the term meant a political revelation or dramatic policy move, made late in the campaign, designed to affect the outcome of a presidential election. Some reporters and editors tend to forget it was the current president's daddy, Bush the Elder, who coined the term that year while running for vice president with Reagan.

George H. W. Bush warned that Carter was about to use the 52 American hostages taken the year before by Iran as some sort of vote-getting trick, such as negotiating their release just before the election.

After Reagan thundered Carter by winning all but six states, it was the Democrats who charged he had pulled off the true October Surprise by secretly making a deal with Iran to delay the release until after the election. Indeed, Iran let the captives go five minutes after Reagan took the oath of office. The suspicions grew when it was learned later in Reagan's tenure that a secret flow of arms to Iran via Israel began to flow a few days after Reagan's inauguration.

Are today's American voters still aware of the concept? You bet. When The Buffalo (N.Y.) News, for this week's Sunday op-ed page "Your Turn" column, asked readers if they thought the United States would ever capture Osama bin Laden, many of them said they are convinced he is already imprisoned, or about to be. "Of course, Osama bin Laden will be found," wrote Richard Jones of Williamsville, N.Y. "I'm convinced that the government knows exactly where he is and will produce him by the middle of October, or sooner, if President Bush begins slipping in the polls."

Lest you think that western New York is being swept by cynicism, be aware this idea has adherents nationwide. There's even a Web site called OsamaBinLotto.org on which, for $3 a guess, you can wager which of five scenarios President Bush will use next month to stampede impressed or frightened voters to his cause.

You just have to provide the closest time and date. Under a visual depiction of Bush in a magician's tuxedo pulling the head of Osama bin Laden from a top hat, the choices are: 1) Producing Osama, 2) Attacking Iran, 3) Attacking North Korea, 4) Postponing the election due to terrorism, 5) Dumping Richard Cheney as vice president.

If you win, you get half the pot, estimated at $500,000. The rest, according to the sponsors, will go to True Majority ACTION, a fund set up by ice cream magnate Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's "to compound the power of all those who believe in social justice."

The notion of a 2004 October Surprise gained momentum last December when columnist Morton Kondracke said former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had asked him, "Do you suppose that the Bush administration has Osama bin Laden hidden away somewhere and will bring him out before the election?"

Albright said later she considered the scenario "a possibility."

There are other versions being floated in the print media: Bush will strike a truce with insurgents in Iraq; weapons of mass destruction will finally be found there; the U.S. military bombs an Iranian nuclear plant.

Presidential candidates in recent elections certainly have been aware of the value of a last-minute news bomb to help their cause. Bush the Elder sought a favorable trade agreement with Europe in 1992, to little avail. Just four days before the vote that year, Reagan defense secretary Caspar Weinberger was indicted on Iran-Contra conspiracy charges (later overturned). It stopped a late Bush surge in the polls and Republicans howled at the timing.

In 1996, Newsweek reported Bill Clinton futilely tried to get the FBI and CIA to conduct a covert sting operation on the Russian Mafia. Turned out he didn't need it. And four years ago, in the waning days of the campaign, drunk driving charges against Dubya in the state of Maine from many years ago surfaced and helped destroy a five-point lead Bush had enjoyed in Florida.

And then there's the specter of terrorist attacks. Anne Kornblut and Bryan Bender, as early as last March, wrote in the Miami Herald that U.S. intelligence monitors have picked up "chatter" between suspected Al-Qaeda members "about the timing of this year's presidential election, reinforcing suspicions that terrorist groups are factoring domestic politics into their calculation."

So, the October Surprise this year might be out of the candidates' hands.

The true October Surprise might be if there isn't one.