October 31, 2006
October Surprise Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 12:30 PM EST With less than 24 hours left before the current month draws to a close, it’s looking less and less likely that the Republicans—or, for that
matter, the Democrats—will pull an “October surprise” out of their hats. Professional politicians and pundits live in dread of such eleventh-hour whammies, and while good money is still on the day coming and going without any great fanfare, it’s hardly too late for a late development.
On October 31, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced on live television that the North Vietnamese government had agreed to continued peace talks in Paris, and to a cessation of attacks on South Vietnamese cities. In return, the U.S. would immediately stop bombing North Vietnam, and peace talks, this time including the Vietcong and the South Vietnamese government, would resume on November 6.
Almost overnight, LBJ’s “October Surprise” delivered a much-needed shot of adrenaline to the moribund campaign of his Vice President and would-be successor, Hubert Humphrey, who had been trailing Richard Nixon in the polls throughout October. The Washington Post concluded that Johnson’s announcement removed “an enormous burden” from Humphrey’s candidacy, and indeed, by November 2 Humphrey regained a slim lead over Nixon, 43 percent to 40 percent, with 13 percent going to George Wallace, the former governor of Alabama who was running as an independent.
But Nixon had an October surprise of his own. In the days leading up to LBJ’s announcement, the Nixon team met secretly with Anna Chan Chennault, a wealthy supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, co-chair of Republican Women for Nixon, and confidante of South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu. At Nixon’s behest, Chennault informed Thieu that Nixon would secure a better deal for his country, and that the Democrats were effectively prepared to sell out Saigon in order to secure peace at any price, as the phrase would later go. If Chennault could convince Thieu to stay away from the negotiating table, LBJ would look foolish, and the Democrats’ eleventh-hour gambit would fail.
Johnson and Humphrey were well aware of these machinations—the FBI was tapping Chennault’s phone—but opted not to make them public. By one plausible account, Humphrey was too honorable a man to reveal the GOP’s shenanigans, as he feared that it would make it all but impossible for Nixon to govern in the event of a victory. By another, equally plausible account, LBJ didn’t want to acknowledge the wiretaps on Anna Chennault, for fear they would reveal scores of other FBI taps and bugs, many of them illegal.
In the end, Nixon’s October surprise trumped LBJ’s. On November 2, Thieu announced that “the government of South Vietnam deeply regrets not being able to participate in the [peace] talks.” Saigon would simply not sit down with the Vietcong.
As quickly as it had emerged, the euphoria over LBJ’s October 31 announcement broke. Without South Vietnamese participation in the Paris talks, there was little chance of final resolution.
Days later, Nixon defeated Humphrey by the slimmest of margins.
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