The Post writes about October Surprises this morning.

The nearly-universal desire to be the one who unleashes a bombshell of new information in the last days before the Election has clearly affected the way campaigns get covered in the last few weeks. Think about just the past few weeks: Mark Foley, Bob Woodward's book, David Kuo's book. The highly selective leak of the National Intelligence Estimate. George Allen's Jewish ancestry. A guy who heard from a guy who heard from a guy who heard from a guy that Allen used the N-word. Shady political operatives distributing lists of "closeted" members of Congress and staff members. Last minute big loans to the parties.

Now we've got a book claiming Ted Kennedy offered to help the Soviet Union work against Reagan.

I like StopOctoberSurprises — who's doing detective work on who was shopping the Foley story a long while back instead of calling the cops — but I kind of want to form "Spread Out October Surprises." We're seeing so many last-minute hit pieces and long-held "revelations" coming to light that they're all stepping on each other, jostling for space on the airwaves and the front pages. I had joked on CNN that it might take a nuclear explosion to get Mark Foley off the front page, and within two days, the Washington Post decided to mock me by putting their latest headline about Foley directly below their story on North Korea's nuclear test.

Folks, if the political world didn't keep all their juicy stuff for the last five weeks or so of a campaign season, we wouldn't have slow weeks and lulls the rest of the year. On behalf of political correspondents everywhere, let's parcel out our dirt, gossip, and long-held secrets at regular intervals. Let's hear it for surprises from December to September!

Also, as Matt Drudge notes in the Post story, a surprise that comes at a regularly-scheduled part of the year isn't really that surprising.