October surprise

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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.

1 1968 Humphrey vs. Nixon
2 1972 Nixon vs. McGovern
3 1976 Ford vs. Carter
4 1980 Carter vs. Reagan
5 1992 Bush vs. Clinton
6 2000 Gore vs. Bush
7 2003 California recall election
8 2004 Bush vs. Kerry
9 2006 midterm elections
- 9.1 Saddam Hussein verdict
10 See also
11 References
12 External links

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 1976 Ford vs. Carter

The 1970s Team B experiment to study Soviet military capabilities was created by conservative cold warriors determined to stop détente and the SALT process. Panel members were all hard-liners. Some believe the experiment was leaked to the press in an unsuccessful attempt at an October surprise to derail Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential bid. In fact, it may have had some effect considering Carter, who was leading by double digits earlier in the campaign, ended up defeating President Gerald Ford in a race that was closer than anticipated with Carter winning 50.1 percent of the popular vote to Ford's 48 percent and also beating Ford in a close electoral outcome.

[edit] 1980 Carter vs. Reagan

Main article: October surprise conspiracy

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.^{[citation needed]} In fact, the election coincidentally fell on the one-year anniversary of the 1979 hostage-taking; this may have contributed to Carter's decisive loss, both in the popular and electoral vote, to Ronald Reagan.

After the release of the hostages at the precise moment of 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.^{[citation needed]} Two separate congressional investigations as well as several investigative journalists looked into the charges, both concluding that there was "insufficient evidence" to support the allegations. Three books, all titled October Surprise, have argued the case for the alleged conspiracy.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] 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. [2] Weinberger received a Presidential pardon from President George H.W. Bush on December 24, 1992, just days before his trial was scheduled to begin.

[edit] 2000 Gore vs. Bush

See also: U.S. 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 Texas in 1976, a report which Bush himself confirmed in a press conference moments after it was revealed. Gore lost the electoral vote after a highly contested recount in Florida gave Bush an official margin of 537 votes in Florida, a state which held 25 electoral votes at the time, enough to put Bush just over the top in the Electoral College giving him an extremely slim 271-267 electoral margin.

[edit] 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. [3]

[edit] 2004 Bush vs. Kerry

See also: U.S. presidential election, 2004

On October 27, reports surfaced about 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.

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." [4] 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.

[edit] 2006 midterm elections

Bush adviser Karl Rove reportedly informed conservative insiders that the GOP had an October surprise prepared for 2006 midterm elections, according to the conservative website NewsMax.^[1] Former Sen. Gary Hart believed that one possibility was an attack on Iran's nuclear program, and possibly a broader attack aimed at regime change.^[2]

Charles Peña of libertarian website Antiwar.com responded to the Rove claim by noting, "So far, however, all the surprises have been unwelcome ones for the Bush administration." The events he included were the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, the Bob Woodward profile of the Bush administration, State of Denial, the news from a biography of Colin Powell that he was "fired" from the administration, and the Mark Foley scandal. "But the biggest October surprise so far," according to Peña, "is North Korea's underground test of a nuclear weapon on Monday."^[3]

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...."^[4] 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.^[5] ^[6]

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. ^[7] Les Roberts denied that the 2004 study attempted to favor one candidate over another.

[edit] 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".^[8] 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]