And he should do it at tonight's debate no less. This is all the Republicans have for foreign policy issues, and of course they are lying about it. The president has to defuse this issue before the next debate which will cover foreign policy. He can do this at tonight's debate.
The only poll I've seen (Rasmussen) shows that people are evenly split about whether the President is at fault for a lack of security, with about 1/3 having no opinion yet.
The Republican propaganda machine is in full swing over the administrations "bungling security" in Libya. We can't match their propaganda machine, and we know the MSM will soon latch on to this before the next debate. I think we need to kill this issue and not have a fight over whether it was because of a video, or whether it was pre-planned. The president can put this out of reach of the right wing propaganda machine.
The president has to have a Harry Truman "the buck stops here" moment at the debate.
We all like to play the what should he say game, so here's my rough version.
We in the white house were not aware of the seriousness of the security threats at Benghazi, and we should have been. This is not Hillary Clinton's fault, it is my fault. While I can't watch over every embassy or consulate in the world, it is my responsibility to make sure the lines of communication to the white house are absolutely clear if there is a credible threat against our personnel. The buck stops here!
I have ordered a thorough investigation as to what happened and why we weren't made aware of any serious threats. This investigation has to be free from the politics of the day so we can correct the communication mistakes and so that we can hunt down the perpetrators of this murderous act and bring them to justice.
Those who think they can attack American personnel in other parts of the world and get away with it, have not learned the lesson learned by Osama Bin Laden. There is no corner of the earth you can hide in. We will find you and justice will be served.
Right now, a lot of people don't realize just how sleazy Mitt Romney is, and they are putting him on the same presidential level as the President. Low information voters hate the finger pointing and want to see someone take responsibility for a mistake. They would absolutely LOVE to hear a president not only take responsibility for something, but actually shift responsibility from a subordinate to himself. This will give him a presidential stature that Romney will never be able to match.
Now look closely at exactly what the president is taking responsibility for. Not for a failure to protect, but for a failure to know about a threat so he COULD protect. And to top if off, it's the damn truth!
At the same time president Obama is portraying Romney as untrustworthy, someone who takes responsibility for a mistake on national TV will be viewed as extremely trustworthy. Keep in mind, the Rasmussen poll had only about 1/3 of the respondents actually blaming the President for the lax security. Do you want to take a guess at who those people might be? So to take responsibility for something different than what the Republicans are accusing you of, and for something 2/3 of the public aren't saying you are responsible for anyway, is a sure home run in the honesty and looking presidential game.
If the president did take responsibility for a communication failure, where would that leave the Republicans? They would now have to convince the public that it wasn't about communications, it was a security failure. The conversation now has shifted from direct security, to communication. People weren't buying into the security failure argument anyway, and now they have the truth to believe so it becomes a lot harder to make the lie believable.
So by taking responsibility for a communication failure in Benghazi, the president will look more trustworthy, more honest, more presidential, and he makes the job much harder for Republicans to promote their lie.