If you watched Tuesday night's presidential debate, you surely caught this remarkable segment:
At about 1:23 into the clip above—after the president showed Mitt Romney who was the dom and who was the sub with his "Please proceed, Governor" command—Romney declared:
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.
I actually really enjoy writing posts like these because once in a while, I like it when things are simple—simple enough for even a Republican presidential candidate to understand. Here is, in fact,
what Obama said in the Rose Garden the day after the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi:
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. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.
I'm really not sure how you can get much clearer than this. Even Candy Crowley, the debate moderator,
fact-checked Romney on the spot, saying that Obama "did in fact call it an 'act of terror.'"
Okay, look, I'm not naive. I know that even the plainest of things can't possibly get through to the Romney campaign and the conservative base. But hey, that's a good thing! The more time they spend in a tizzy over "act of terror" ≠ "act of terror," the longer they'll look like fools trying to politicize the deaths of Americans who died in the service of their country. Meanwhile, Barack Obama will continue to look like something Mitt Romney simply isn't: a president.