In other words, [CNN's Candy] Crowley became a real-time, partisan fact-checker, rather than a moderator—but of a peculiar sort that did not fully assume her new role until Obama himself was desperate for a bailout.
Victor Davis Hanson "In the second presidential election debate between President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on October 16, 2012, CNN moderator Candy Crowley sensed that Obama, coming off a dismal initial September 26 debate, was again floundering.
"Romney was driving home the valid point that the Obama Administration had inadequately prepared the American mission in Benghazi for likely terrorist attacks. And such laxity resulted in a horrific attack and the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador.
"Yet in the wake of the attacks, Team Obama denied that the killing of four Americans was indeed an act of terror. Instead, it fed the public a transparently but politically correct false narrative of a spontaneous riot in reaction to a video posted by a purported right-wing Egyptian residing on American soil.
"Yet in the debate, Obama retorted: “The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we’re going to hunt down those who committed this crime.”
"Romney pounced: “You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror? It was not a spontaneous demonstration—is that what you’re saying? I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.”
"Romney was correct. Obama took two weeks before he eventually jettisoned his administration’s concocted “spontaneous demonstrations” party line that his subordinates—Susan Rice in particular, to her eternal embarrassment—had been peddling to the American people.
"Yet in the debate, Obama flailed with a weak, “Get the transcript.”
"In truth, Obama in his comments after the attack had simply offered, “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for”—a deliberate effort not to name Benghazi specifically in the context of a terrorist act.
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