October Surprises

When I thought about possible October surprises, I failed to consider this one.

In this article in The New Yorker, David Remnick considers the ramifications more powerfully:  "For some time, commentators have routinely discussed what 'the October surprise' would be. It was assumed that an autumn drama would entail the President challenging the legitimacy of the ballot, and he has done that repeatedly. At the debate, he retailed false and exaggerated stories about mail-in ballots, all in a seeming effort to sow confusion and cast doubt on a contest that he appears to be losing. But now that 'October surprise' is here, and it involves something no less alarming—the state of the President’s health and that of his wife and senior advisers, and what it all will mean for the governance of the United States, a nation that has been suffering multiple crises for so many months."

When I thought of possible October surprises, I thought about military attacks, the traditional October surprise, but I wasn't really expecting that.  With two elderly men running for office, I was expecting possible death or disabling stroke or heart attack.  As the months have gone by, and Trump hasn't contracted the corona virus, that possibility must have slipped from my radar screen of possible disruptions.

I got up early this morning, as I do every morning, and promptly slipped down this rabbit hole of coverage.  My spouse immediately wondered if it could be a hoax, a bid for sympathy votes. I think this president has a horror of being seen as weak, so if he was going to perpetuate some sort of scam, he'd go for something different.  And I don't think he's strategic/smart enough to create a scam that people like me would think that he would never do; he would give up any advantages so that he wouldn't be seen as weak.

So much of the past few months/years/decades has seemed like a crash course that covers the material our Civics classes never taught us.  If you find yourself wondering what would happen if a presidential candidate died at any point on the path to the election/swearing in ceremony, The Washington Post has a great 2 part series here and here.