Mark Green: Name The October Surprise

I invite readers to submit entries to the “Name the October Surprise” contest by answering this question: “What do you think is a possible October Surprise that Bush will announce in order to try to win a close election?”

This contest emerges out of history — political history and Bush history. …

The goal is to anticipate particular “surprises” in the hope, however small, that Bushies may shy away from what’s widely anticipated because it reeks of a political ploy. That is, I believe in preventive wars politically, not militarily.

Is this contest cynical? No, just realistic. A governing elite which seems to embody Mark Twain’s axiom that “a lie gets halfway around the world before truth puts on her boots” should be presumed capable of saying or doing almost anything to hold onto power. As Eric Alterman and I wrote in The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America, the President straight-facedly declares that there’s no proof of global warming, that the jury is out on evolution, that the recession began under Clinton (it started in March, 2001), that there were an adequate 60 stems cells lines for research (when there were 11), that Saddam = al Qaeda – and now that a vote for Kerry is a vote for a terrorist attack on the U.S. Such a record requires vigilant voters to begin a conversation about what the most messianic, radical, divisive and dissembling president of the modern era could do to win re-election.