October 31, 2006
October Surprise II Posted by John Steele Gordon at 03:10 PM EST Joshua Zeitz points out that we are fast running out of October, limiting the ability of either side to launch an October surprise. This reminds me a bit of the old line from the Pogo comic strip about “Friday the 13th falls on a Tuesday this month!” Because of the calendar, the election is late this year, and there is still a week of November to go. November surprises are still more than possible.
Often the best time, from a tactical standpoint, to launch such a surprise is the Friday before the election, giving time for the story to circulate but not much time for the other side to respond effectively. It was on the Friday before the election in 2000 that news of George Bush’s long-ago driving-while-drinking incident was released by Democratic operatives who had been in possession of the information for months. To be sure, the Bush campaign, knowing that it was possible the incident could become public, should have made the matter public itself months earlier. That was a dumb mistake that came within a nanometer of costing Bush the election.
Perhaps the most egregious case of an October surprise—because it was launched by someone who had no business whatever being involved in the political campaign at all, indeed should have bent over backwards to avoid even the appearance of playing politics—was when the Iran-Contra special prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh released indictments of former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger and others and criticized President George H. W. Bush’s part in the scandal. This bombshell was dropped on the Friday before the 1992 election. Bush, by that point, was almost certainly toast anyway, but it clearly didn’t help.
My favorite whipping boy, The New York Times editorial page, could find nothing wrong with Mr. Walsh’s action, but it had a very different opinion when the special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal was about to make his final report in September 2000, two full months before Hillary Clinton would face the voters in her first run for the Senate. Of course, The New York Times opposed the reelection of George H. W. Bush and favored electing Mrs. Clinton. I wrote about it at the time.
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