Burnt Orange Report

It's October. Surprise!

By Jim Dallas

I for one am getting pretty tired of people carrying on about the "October Surprise," as if it was a certainty. You know, the October Surprise comes around every four years, sort of like locusts, or sunspots, or disco.

There is no good reason to suspect that an "October Surprise" is inevitable, and indeed, the October Surprise could very well be the lack of anything surprising at all.

Specifically, I am getting kind of tired of people saying that Osama is going to be produced on schedule. Now that's mighty rich, because what sense it would make at this point? Half the country is predisposed to believe such as "surprise" would be a gimmick. And I'm not sure what it would accomplish, either; sure, we may have "75 percent" of Al Qaeda, but as soon as we got 100 percent, the justification for permanent war would evaporate. And considering that is Bush's only, uh, "real issue"...

I'm not naively suggesting that nothing will happen; I am suggesting that it is naive to assume it would be so obvious and gaudy as "The October Surprise," you know, as obvious as a swarm of locusts, sunspots, or disco enthusiasts.