October Surprise

NEW YORK attorney general and self-styled monitor of the nation's financial industry Elliot Spitzer has launched another major investigation just two weeks before the election, driving down stock market averages. Meanwhile, oil prices have topped $50 a barrel, some say driven upward by speculators. John Kerry's multibillionaire backers have long experience in benefiting from changes in commodity prices. Rising oil prices and declining stock averages, of course, work to the advantage of the challenger in a close presidential campaign.

Who says George Bush has no domestic program? Whatever else happened in this campaign, no one will be able to say that again. James A. Baker 3d is Bush's domestic program, his new October surprise. The President made that unmistakably clear last Sunday in the first debate. Baker will fill in the details, starting this week, supplying the vision thing on the home front as he did on the international front. Before, he was Bush's foreign policy program, but no more. Now, the President tells us, "What I'm going to do is say to Jim Baker when this campaign is over, 'All right.

BECAUSE WE LIVE in an age of information over-glut, causing too many Americans to live only in the moment, it's reasonable to ask if "Superstorm Sandy" decides next week's election. Clearly, it will have an impact. It could be the ultimate October surprise. I'm not talking about obvious stuff, such as canceled campaign events, unseen TV ads, fewer robo-calls, less door-to-door canvassing or even suspended early voting in the District of Columbia and Maryland. I'm talking about the real and potentially important psychological effect across a broad swath of the eastern United States.

I spent the weekend studying an 84-page binder of documents I received by express from Florida publishing executive Bill Loiry. It is an exhibit Loiry assembled, as a concerned citizen, to test the substance of newly circulating rumors that George Bush may have been the key figure in an October 1980 secret-arms pact with Iran to sink the re-election bid of President Jimmy Carter by delaying the release of the 52 American hostages then held in...

In case anyone is feeling the urge, yes, it would be in bad taste to crack Dan Quayle jokes until President Bush gets a clean bill of health from someone more expert than Marlin Fitzwater. But no, such immunity does not cover the obligation of ABC-TV's "Nightline" to produce an in-depth probe of the so-called "October Surprise. " That's the name associated with a plot allegedly used by Republican strategists in late 1980 to wrap up the presidential election for Ronald Reagan by making a deal with Iran to hold on to 52 American hostages until their release would come too late to help then-President Jimmy Carter win election to a second term.

CASEY DUNIT Late spook William Casey has been accused (posthumously, of course) of masterminding every evil deed from the Iran-Contra scandal to the October Surprise. These are 10 things Casey may have done: 10. Left cap off toothpaste, causing it to form hardened, mint-flavored fluoride pellet. 9. Put the "bomp" in the "bomp bomp bomp. " 8. Fathered Debbie Gibson's two-headed Bigfoot baby. 7. Introduced New Kid Donnie Wahlberg to the flammable properties of cheap vodka.

Do they think we're idiots or what? Revisionist historians are asking us to believe that Ronald Reagan sealed his victory over President Jimmy Carter in 1980 by cutting a deal with Iran to keep our embassy hostages imprisoned until after the election. In return, they say, he promised to sell weapons to the Iranians, who were in a desperate war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The Reagan people deny everything, categorically. They point out that the only people who claim knowledge of such a deal are sleazy arms dealers and two-bit intelligence officers beyond the fringes of credibility.

BILL CONLIN fails to balance his June 21 proclamation with the obvious point that Ryan Howard is a very much-needed insurance policy. In the event that Jim Thome can't perform for the remainder of the season, the Phils would need to rely on two utility infielders, both of whom lack the power to fill this void. The needs of a team playing in a pennant race are much more important than the desires of a player or columnist. And just maybe by keeping "Howard Hostage," as he says, the Fightin's might possibly have their own "October Surprise" this fall.

Now it's Sen. Albert Gore Jr., Democrat of Tennesee, who wants to smoke out the details of a purported secret deal to head off a 1980 "October surprise. " The deal was supposedly made by the Reagan-Bush campaign with the ayatollah's Iran to delay the release of 52 U.S. hostages until after the election. It's conspiracy theorism at its best: Reagan flunky and soon-to-be CIA chief William Casey jets about Europe, holds hush-hush meetings with shady Iranians, promising to get Israel to ship spare parts to Iran's dwindling arsenal if the mullahs will deny Jimmy Carter the pre-election lift of a triumphal hostage release.

An October surprise might take place in Iraq that could affect the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. There could even be two October surprises. But, in this polarized political season, it's not clear which candidate would be helped or hurt. Iraqi officials are predicting that insurgents may try to influence the U.S. vote by doing something particularly violent just before Nov. 2. "There could be an October surprise - a big bang in Baghdad," I was told from Baghdad by Zuhair Humadi, the secretary-general of the Iraqi cabinet.

BECAUSE WE LIVE in an age of information over-glut, causing too many Americans to live only in the moment, it's reasonable to ask if "Superstorm Sandy" decides next week's election. Clearly, it will have an impact. It could be the ultimate October surprise. I'm not talking about obvious stuff, such as canceled campaign events, unseen TV ads, fewer robo-calls, less door-to-door canvassing or even suspended early voting in the District of Columbia and Maryland. I'm talking about the real and potentially important psychological effect across a broad swath of the eastern United States.

To weather experts, the most surprising aspect of the potent wintry storm that has interrupted the summer game's World Series is that something similar hasn't happened more often. By scheduling World Series games for the end of October, they say, Major League Baseball officials have been playing roulette with nature. This time, they lost. "They're willing to take that risk," said Art DeGaetano, the director of the Northeast Regional Climate Center in Ithaca, N.Y., "and it bites them.

Sales at major U.S. retailers rose in October by the least in four months, the chains reported yesterday, as consumers held off on spending before the holiday season. Sales at 57 chains surveyed by the International Council of Shopping Centers rose 3 percent last month from a year earlier, the slowest growth since June. "The consumer took a break here in October after going hog wild in September," said Ken Perkins, an analyst with Retail Metrics L.L.C. in Swampscott, Mass.

Well, Sen. John Kerry certainly did his best to offer an October surprise for Republicans. On Monday, Kerry was in California, stumping for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides. At an event at Pasadena City College intended to highlight Democratic education policies, Kerry told students, "You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. " He added, "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.

BILL CONLIN fails to balance his June 21 proclamation with the obvious point that Ryan Howard is a very much-needed insurance policy. In the event that Jim Thome can't perform for the remainder of the season, the Phils would need to rely on two utility infielders, both of whom lack the power to fill this void. The needs of a team playing in a pennant race are much more important than the desires of a player or columnist. And just maybe by keeping "Howard Hostage," as he says, the Fightin's might possibly have their own "October Surprise" this fall.

NEW YORK attorney general and self-styled monitor of the nation's financial industry Elliot Spitzer has launched another major investigation just two weeks before the election, driving down stock market averages. Meanwhile, oil prices have topped $50 a barrel, some say driven upward by speculators. John Kerry's multibillionaire backers have long experience in benefiting from changes in commodity prices. Rising oil prices and declining stock averages, of course, work to the advantage of the challenger in a close presidential campaign.

An October surprise might take place in Iraq that could affect the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. There could even be two October surprises. But, in this polarized political season, it's not clear which candidate would be helped or hurt. Iraqi officials are predicting that insurgents may try to influence the U.S. vote by doing something particularly violent just before Nov. 2. "There could be an October surprise - a big bang in Baghdad," I was told from Baghdad by Zuhair Humadi, the secretary-general of the Iraqi cabinet.

Down in the polls and under heavy criticism from members of his own party, President Clinton appears ready to launch an "October Surprise" invasion of Haiti, perhaps hoping it will repair his damaged political fortunes. Who is for this invasion? Not public opinion. Haiti is no threat to America or to its policies anywhere in the world. Not Democratic leaders. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Lee Hamilton of Indiana, told CNN he believes most members of Congress are "highly skeptical" about sending U.S. troops to Haiti.

Who says George Bush has no domestic program? Whatever else happened in this campaign, no one will be able to say that again. James A. Baker 3d is Bush's domestic program, his new October surprise. The President made that unmistakably clear last Sunday in the first debate. Baker will fill in the details, starting this week, supplying the vision thing on the home front as he did on the international front. Before, he was Bush's foreign policy program, but no more. Now, the President tells us, "What I'm going to do is say to Jim Baker when this campaign is over, 'All right.

With the U.S. Senate campaign in full swing in Pennsylvania, both candidates are releasing position papers and speaking out on a wide range of important policies. Despite the candidates' insistence that this is not a single-issue race, there is one issue that everyone knows is at the crux of the confrontation: the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas controversy - last year's October surprise - and the spectacle the Senate Judiciary Committee caused in mishandling it. This is, after all, what got Lynn Yeakel in the race in the first place, and turned what should have been an easy re-election for Arlen Specter into the race of his life.