It is said that every US presidential election gets an October Surprise; a little jolt of chaos into the regimented order of a campaign that strikes in the few weeks before election day, a bit of news that by cynical design or naïve accident might make or break the hopes of a candidate.
The term has its origins in the politics of the Vietnam War, when Lyndon Johnson, in the final months of his second term, tried to help his vice-president Hubert Humphrey’s election campaign by announcing a halt to bombing on 30 October, 1968. It was first referred-to as such during the following election cycle, when Henry Kissinger, then national security adviser to incumbent president Nixon, turned Johnson’s tactic against the Democrats by announcing that “we believe peace is at hand” in Vietnam on 26 October, 1972.
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