R&R: Will there be an October surprise?
Plus: What I’m reading and watching
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“October is the cruelest month of any election year,” the “gonzo” journalist Hunter S. Thompson once wrote.
“But by then the pain is so great that even the strong are like jelly and time has lost all meaning for anybody still involved in a political campaign,” he continued. “October in the politics business is like drowning in scum or trying to hang on through the final hour of a bastinado punishment. The flesh is dying and the heart is full of hate.”
So, um, how’s everyone holding up?
Election Day, as you may know, is precisely 30 days away. October has begun; we are in the midst of the miserable march Thompson described.
The new month also means we are all on tenterhooks waiting for an “October surprise,” a phrase that was coined in 1980 by Reagan campaign manager William Casey and which has haunted political operatives and journalists ever since.
The history of “October surprises” since then contains some serious bombshells (the stock market crash of 2008, the Comey letter of 2016) — but also its fair share of duds, including the one Casey was referring to. Casey spent October 1980 warning about the possibility that Reagan’s rival Jimmy Carter would strike a pre-election deal to release the Americans being held hostage in Iran. But no deal was struck; the election proceeded on as normal.1
Similarly, my first memory of the phrase — and, truly, of learning who Donald Trump was — was in October 2012, when the then-“Apprentice” host promised that his efforts investigating Barack Obama’s past had yielded a bombshell…which ended up just being an announcement from Trump that he would donate $5 million to charity if Obama released his college records. (I lost track of the guy after that, not sure what he did next.)
This week, at least four potential “October surprise” candidates revealed themselves: