In the span of our lives, summer is a blink of an eye with most forgetting by Thanksgiving whether it was hot or mild. The passing of six months is, for most people, a flash unless there were some extraordinary events in your life or you have reached the end of your seasons.

But in politics and history, six months can be an eternity and no one knows what Clio, the Muse of History, has in store for us. The unknowns can profoundly alter the outcome of any election. Historians refer to such unknowns as interceding events, akin to summer lightning, the unexpected bolt out of the blue, always on the horizon but no one knowing exactly when and where it will strike. Such events alter the course of history in ways unimaginable the day before.  Such was the case in the quiet start of summer on June 28, 1914, when the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary was cut down with his wife in the Balkans. The epoch of the world wars started on that fateful day and did not end until the opening of the Berlin Wall Nov. 9, 1989, another bolt out of the blue. Pearl Harbor also comes to mind as does the Great Crash in October 1929 and the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas as he prepared for his second election. Today, as close as we are to the bolt out of the blue Sept. 11, 2001, we can grasp its full significance without the luxury of historical distance. As the nation watched the Pope at Ground Zero and his brief interaction with the survivors and families of the victims, everyone knows that the fall of the WorldTradeCenter still echoes around the world. And it is the backdrop to this election.

It is not so far-fetched to imagine that we may suffer from another bolt out of the blue between now and Election Day. It does not take a leap of the imagination to understand that the agencies responsible for our security are on very high alert. When terrorists attached the trains in Madrid a few years ago, the outcome of the election was very different than the forecasts of pollsters the night before. Bin Laden and his suicidal followers are watching our election very closely and one suspects they would love to tell the world that they and they alone altered its outcome. Our government also knows that any disruption in the chain of oil supply—for example, an attack on the fields in the Persian Gulf region—that causes a shortage at a time when oil is selling for $1.16 a barrel would have a devastating impact on an already very shaky economy.

Market watchers know full well the seriousness of our economic situation. What happened to the great banking house of Bear Stearns was a harbinger of the future as we read the list of foreclosures and bankruptcies as well as the closing of major outlet stores in the malls. The nation has not witnessed as many foreclosures and commercial failures since the Great Depression and the triggers put into place in that era are not working. If, in the next six months, the Stock Market crashes and takes with it the major pension funds, we will no longer be talking about a recession. A depression will be on the immediate horizon. Surely, this will move the electorate in another direction. The sitting president will be dubbed the new Hoover and the Democrats will recast their candidate as the new FDR. John McCain, on the other hand, would immediately distance himself from his old foe George Bush and project himself as a person who has the instincts of a survivor who weathered the worst in Vietnam. Many would see in him a person with a steady hand on the wheel of history, and his age could easily work in his favor. 

But for the moment, the weather in Washington is clear and sunny. There are clouds on the horizon, but bolts of lightning only being considered in the boardrooms on Wall Street and at the security agencies.  By the time Thanksgiving rolls around, we won’t have forgotten this primary season, presidential campaign or election of the first African-American, first woman, or oldest first-term president. Most of us will have forgotten about the summer weather, unless, by chance, there was a heat wave. In that case, global warming will be the talk of the town and a face from another hot summer will be on TV: Al Gore.

-- Sander A. Diamond, professor of history