Old Reliable

The final presidential debate is tonight and while, as I have blogged before, an increasing number of pundits and pols are counseling Mitt Romney to husband his slim lead in the polls and go "wobbly" by refraining from pressing the President too stridently on Benghazi-gate, at least one sane, and very influential, voice has emerged:  The editors at National Review:

Tonight, Governor Romney and President Obama will meet for a third and final debate before November 6, and this time the exclusive subject will be foreign policy. Mr. Romney should relish the opportunity, having wound up but failed to deliver a critical blow to the president’s credibility on the miasma in Benghazi during their second debate last week. The president was spared from having to fully account for the events of September 11, 2012, by a moderator whose on-the-spot “fact check” obscured more than it illuminated, and by Romney’s own apparent confusion in pressing the issue. 

Romney cannot and should not make that mistake again. Nor should he be shy in questioning the president’s dubious record, in Benghazi or across the world.

Not to be outdone, the magazine's John O'Sullivan penned his own shot across the bow:

If, however, Romney persuades the world that the Obama administration has given a “misleading” account of the Benghazi murders to American television viewers, to the media, to the United Nations, and to the world at large, he will indict a great many people in addition to the president. 

Simply list the people who have gone out in public to repeat the video argument — and related arguments such as the claim (maintained for eight days after the president used the phrase “acts of terror” in the Rose Garden) that it couldn’t yet be said for certain that the Benghazi attack was a terrorist action. 

If this was indeed a deception, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Ambassador Susan Rice, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, White House aide David Axelrod, and press spokesman Jay Carney are only six of the people who apparently cooperated in it...

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not just about politics, although there is tremendous political advantage to be had in pressing the case, this is also about justice.  Must we remind ourselves that four men died?  As Charles Krauthammer said early on about this scandal by way of comparison, "Nobody died in Watergate."

So, what did the All the President's Men and Women know, not to mention the President himself, and when did they know it.  And why, for heaven's sake, did they feel the need to lie?  What are they covering up?


PS
In case you were wondering, day in and day out I find National Review the single best journal of conservative opinion.  (And it has many very strong competitors.)  Simply put, I trust the editors' judgment.  If I disagree with them, and I sometimes do, I feel compelled to stop and ask myself why.