October surprise

For the alleged deal between the US and Iran concerning the Iran hostage crisis, see October surprise conspiracy.

An October surprise is American political jargon describing a news event with the potential to influence the outcome of an election, particularly one for the presidency. It is so called because Election Day in the U.S. is the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and events shortly before the election have greater potential to swing votes. Most of the time, the term is used to label actions of a sitting president, especially with regard to military or foreign policy matters, but it can also apply to news stories unfavorable to the incumbent administration. "Historically, news outlets avoid investigative pieces critical of candidates within days of an election to avoid appearing partisan." [1] Particularly since the 1980 election, the term has been pre-emptively used to discredit late-campaign news by one side or the other.

1968 Humphrey vs. Nixon

Citing progress with the Paris peace talks, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced to the nation on March 31, 1968 that he had ordered a cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" above the 20^th parallel. Additionally, and quite surprisingly, Johnson stated that he would not accept the Democratic nomination for a second term. As the race between Humphrey and Nixon was winding down by October 1968, with the polls indicating Nixon was in the lead, Johnson announced on October 31 a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam, once again citing that progress had been made in the Paris negotiations. Johnson hoped that the negotiations would bear fruit by the time of the election, and the Vietnam War would be officially over. With the war continuing, many liberal voters would not vote for Humphrey, and Nixon won by only 500,000 popular votes (though he did gain 110 more electoral votes than Humphrey--301 to Humphrey's 191). Bombing above the 20^th parallel in North Vietnam would not resume again until May 1972 with Operation Linebacker. A vast majority of the sorties that had been flown over North Vietnam would be shifted to Vietnamese strongholds in Laos and later in Cambodia.

1972 Nixon vs. McGovern

With less than a month remaining until the election between incumbent president Richard Nixon and Democrat George McGovern, Nixon's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, announced that "peace [was] at hand" in Vietnam. Nixon had vowed to end the unpopular Vietnam War four years earlier, but had failed to either cease hostilities or gradually bring about an end to the war. Nixon had essentially been assured an easy reelection victory against McGovern, but Kissinger's statement increased Nixon's already high standing with the public. This proved true when the President defeated McGovern by a 20-point popular vote margin in one of the largest landslides in American election history.

1980 Carter vs. Reagan

Main article: October surprise conspiracy theory

The original Carter October Surprise was first written about in a Jack Anderson article in the Washington Post in the fall of 1980, in which he alleged that the Carter administration was preparing a massive military invasion of Iran for rescuing the hostages in order to help him get reelected. Subsequent allegations surfaced against Ronald Reagan alleging that his team had impeded the hostage release to negate the potential boost to the Carter campaign.

During the Iran hostage crisis, the Republican challenger Ronald Reagan feared a last-minute deal to release the hostages, which might earn incumbent Jimmy Carter enough votes to win re-election. As it happened, in the days prior to the election, press coverage was consumed with the Iranian government's decision--and Carter's simultaneous announcement--that the hostages would not be released until after the election. In fact, the election coincidentally fell on the one-year anniversary of the 1979 hostage-taking; this undoubtedly contributed to Carter's loss to Ronald Reagan.

After the release of the hostages on the same day as Reagan's inauguration on January 20, 1981, some charged that the Reagan campaign made a secret deal with the Iranian government whereby the Iranians would hold the hostages until Reagan was inaugurated, ensuring that Carter would lose the election. Two separate congressional investigations as well as several investigative journalists looked into the charges, both concluding that there was no plan to seek to delay the hostages' release. At least three books, all titled October Surprise, have argued the case for the alleged conspiracy.

1992 Bush vs. Clinton

Just four days before the vote that year, Ronald Reagan's defense secretary Caspar Weinberger was implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal. Though he claims to have been opposed to the sale on principle, Weinberger participated in the transfer of United States TOW missiles to Iran, and was later indicted on several felony charges of lying to the Iran-Contra independent counsel during its investigation. The relevance of the situation helped stop a late Bush surge in the polls. Republicans angrily accused Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh of timing Weinberger's indictment to hurt George H.W. Bush's re-election chances, and on Christmas Eve 1992, in the waning days of his presidency, Bush pardoned Weinberger, just days before his trial was scheduled to begin.

2000 Gore vs. Bush

See also: United States presidential election, 2000

Days before the November 7 election, Carl Cameron of Fox News, working with the local Fox affiliate in Maine, unearthed an old report that Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush had been arrested for drunk driving in that state in 1976, a report which Bush himself confirmed in a press conference moments after it was revealed.

2003 California recall election

The Los Angeles Times released a story about Arnold Schwarzenegger and subsequent allegations that he was a womanizer guilty of multiple acts of sexual misconduct in past decades. The story was released just before the 2003 California recall, prompting many pundits to charge that the timing of the story was aimed specifically at derailing the recall campaign. It was not the only embarrassing story about Schwarzenegger to surface just days before the campaign: in addition, ABC News and the New York Times reported that in 1975 Schwarzenegger had praised Adolf Hitler during interviews for the film Pumping Iron, which was responsible for the bodybuilder-turned-actor's fame. The twin controversies later led L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez to coin the term "gropenfuhrer" to describe California's new governor-elect; a series of "Doonesbury" strips made the term infamous.

2004 Bush vs. Kerry

See also: United States presidential election, 2004

On October 27, the New York Times reported the disappearance of huge cache of explosives from a warehouse in al Qa'qaa (see Missing explosives in Iraq). The John Kerry campaign blamed the Bush administration for this supposed mismanagement; administration officials charged that the Times had gotten the story wrong, and that the explosives had been cleared from the storage facility before the looting was supposed to have taken place.

On October 29, the Arabic news agency Al Jazeera aired a video of Osama bin Laden (see 2004 Osama bin Laden video). In a speech that justifies and takes responsibility for the actions of September 11th, bin Laden calls out the Bush administration and the American position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Your security does not lie in the hands of Kerry, Bush, or al-Qaeda," Osama claimed; "Your security is in your own hands." [2] This is believed to have helped President Bush's campaign as it thrust the War on Terrorism back into the public eye. There is debate as to whether bin Laden was aware of the effect the video would have on the elections; the "Bush bounce" from the video did not surprise most outside observers of the 2004 election.

Before the election, Saudi Prince Bandar cut the price of oil (thus reducing gas prices) explicitly to help ensure a Bush victory [3]. According to a 60 Minutes broadcast, "Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told us that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election to ensure the US economy is strong on Election Day." [4]

2006 midterm elections

In October 2006, Charles Peña of libertarian website Antiwar.com wrote that "the biggest October surprise so far is North Korea's underground test of a nuclear weapon on Monday."

The Mark Foley scandal, in which the congressman resigned over sexual computer messages he exchanged with underage congressional pages, broke on September 28, 2006 and dominated the news in early October. Bloomberg.com wrote, "The October surprise came early this election year...." Allegations that both Republicans and Democrats had knowledge of Foley's actions months before the breaking of the story only fueled the speculation regarding the possibly politically motivated timing of the story's release.

Two studies by The Lancet on mortality in Iraq before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq have been described as October surprises for the 2004 and 2006 elections. Les Roberts admitted that the 2004 study was deliberately timed to appear just before the presidential election, though he denied that it attempted to favor one candidate over another. Skeptics have pointed out questionable assumptions, implausible data, and the ideological leanings of the reports' authors.

Saddam Hussein verdict

News that the Saddam Hussein trial verdict would be rendered on November 5, 2006, just two days ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, led Tom Engelhardt of liberal magazine The Nation to dub it, on October 17th, the "November Surprise". In a White House Press gaggle on November 4, 2006, a reporter implied that the timing of the Saddam trial verdict may be an attempt by the White House to influence the outcome of the November election, to which White House Press Secretary Tony Snow replied "Are you smoking rope?"

Scott Horton, political commentator and law professor at the Columbia University Law School, commented, "That November 5 date is designed to show some progress in Iraq. This is the last full news-cycle day in the U.S. before the elections. It'll be Monday. And the American public will see Saddam condemned to death and see it as a positive thing." [5]

Even before the announcement of the verdict, on Saturday November 4th, Snow denied that Sunday's expected verdict was tied to the election and said Iraq's judiciary is completely independent. "Are you telling me that in Iraq, that they're sitting around — I'm sorry, that the Iraqi judicial system is coming up with an October surprise?" Snow said, then he corrected his calendar reading. "A November surprise? Man, that's — wow." [6]

Continuing accusations of the administration engineering the coincidence between the verdict and the election cycle surfaced later in an interview on CNN's Late Edition, to which Snow replied that "The idea is preposterous, that somehow we've been scheming and plotting with the Iraqis". [7]

See also

• Opposition research
• Wag the Dog, a novel and film describing a fictional war started solely to distract attention from a Presidential scandal.

External links

• Russia's Prime Minister and October Surprise - Consortium News - May 15, 1999
• October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan. By Gary Sick.