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Hoisted by his own petard

There is no doubt Mitt Romney was injured last night by a device (that’s more or less what a petard is:  an explosive device to breach a wall) he intended to use against Barack Obama.   The Governor’s claim that the President had not labelled the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans a terrorist act for 14 days was quickly fact-checked and found untrue on the spot.

The question is why this claim had any currency at all.  It has been circulating now for weeks and was false all along.  Why does the supposedly liberal media repeat ad infinitum a claim that it took only seconds to invalidate?

Part of the problem is that the Administration muddled its own message with ambiguous statements that came after the President’s Rose Garden reference to the attack as an act of terror.  Vice President Biden and UN Ambassador Susan Rice have cited intelligence reporting as the basis for the suggestion that the attack was related to a demonstration against the “Innocence of Muslims” video.  Anyone who has dealt with raw intelligence reports can easily imagine that this–and possibly several other explanations–were offered up in the aftermath of the incident.  Human intelligence (humint) sources are only too anxious to earn their keep when an incident occurs by offering their own version.  With the CIA station in Benghazi cleaned out, it would have been difficult to make contact and verify information from sources that are often unreliable.

Another part of the problem is the media’s obvious effort to bend over backwards to avoid the charge that it has a liberal bias.  These charges from the right have had a palpable impact, causing what Sarah Palin calls the “lamestream” media to hesitate when faced with right-wing bluster.  If you think you are being objective, any claim of bias will make you think twice.  Fox News, which does not pretend to be objective, has no problem with Jon Stewart’s nightly assaults on its veracity.

I was surprised by the President’s mild reaction to Romney’s false claim.  He continued seated and uttered what I took to be a mild grunt when the moderator confirmed the falsehood.  But of course a black man in America has to be careful about showing too much anger.  It would not have been well received in parts of the electorate.

Will Romney’s mistake/lie/exaggeration/mistatement affect the election outcome?  I doubt it.  Those who like him will write it off as a mistake.  Those who don’t will be confirmed in their distaste.  Those who haven’t made up their minds will wonder why anyone would think it important compared to all the serious policy issues at stake.

Nevertheless, hoisted by his own petard.