You wouldn’t know it from scanning the news today but Mitt Romney took on Barack Obama and Candy Crowley simultaneously in the second presidential debate Tuesday night, and even though Obama pulled a Biden, Romney put a smackdown on his tormentors.

Romney did this despite obvious collusion between the moderator and the Obama camp, both in the types of questions posed to Obama and Crowley's insistence throughout the "debate" that Romney be shut down every time he was scoring points. When these circuses are over, the majority of voters likely will remember best the unceasing efforts by the media to rescue Obama from his own mendacity.

Obama needed to come out looking presidential, after looking like a joke in the last debate. Instead, he alternatively looked petulant or overly aggressive this time, seemed about to nod off on his stool on occasion, interrupted repeatedly, retreated when Romney pressed him, and relied heavily on intervention from Crowley – a propagandist who works for the Communist News Network CNN – to bail him out of tight spots.

Crowley was supposed to be the moderator but it was later disclosed that she screened the questions beforehand, and selected those that would be asked to both candidates. She even involved herself in a blatant effort to rescue Obama from his own foreign relations failures, when Romney was hammering him on the issue of security in Benghazi, Libya.

Romney nailed Obama repeatedly on the failures of his administration while Obama resorted to inaccurate caricatures, warmed over campaign rhetoric, and I can't say it often enough, intervention from Crowley.

Romney for instance, went straight to the president's space when Obama claimed that Romney was lying about Obama's restrictions on oil exploration and production on federal lands and off shore. When Romney quoted the percentage of reductions in oil and gas production Obama shouted "That's not true!"

So Romney questioned what exactly were the right numbers according to the Book of Obama. Instead of answering Obama retreated to rhetoric and tried to change the subject, until Crowley intervened.

That marked the second time this week that Obama hid behind a woman, the first being when Hillary Clinton took full responsibility for the deaths in Benghazi which everyone except Obama groupies took with a grain of salt.

Romney also nailed Obama when Obama brought up the investments Romney's blind trust makes for him, asking Obama if he had looked at the investments made by his own pension fund. Obama for the umpteenth time in the evening, tried to portray Romney as the detached rich guy while Obama is the working class hero - what a joke - but Romney who obviously has looked at Obama's pension more than Obama has, noted that its investments are eerily similar to those made by Romney's blind trust.

But the really big issues where Crowley jumped up to shield Obama from the harsh glare of reality and truth involved gun control and the Libyan debacle.

When a teen in the audience asked Obama what he was going to do to rid the streets of AK-47 rifles Obama gave her the standard gun control rhetoric; but Romney tied the question directly to the Fast and furious scandal. For those who watch network news and don't know what Fast and Furious is all about, it was a program hatched by Obama and his advisers in November 2009 in which they forced firearms dealers along the border with Mexico to illegally sell guns including AK-47s to people representing Mexican drug cartels.

The guns were then transported unimpeded across the border and used against police, civilians, and the drug cartels' competitors. But they also were used to kill a US border agent which led to a Congressional investigation, a finding of contempt of Congress against Obama's Atty. General and Obama invoking executive privilege to prevent Congress from getting any documents that could tie him to the operation.

Crowley, as expected, interrupted Romney and changed the subject, telling Romney at one point "I understand the stakes here. I understand both of you. But I - I will get run out of town if I don't..."

But the final indignity of the evening came when Romney correctly pointed out that Obama didn't call the Sept. 11 attacks on the Benghazi consulate a terrorist incident until weeks later. Romney noted that, instead, Obama and his minions including UN Ambassador Susan Rice repeatedly claimed that the murders resulted from a spontaneous uprising of Muslims who didn't like a critical YouTube video.

Obama, obviously very thin-skinned about the issue and the ongoing cover-up associated with it, interrupted claiming that he said it was a terrorist attack in a 5 minute and 35 second address to the media in the White House Rose Garden on Sept. 12, just before he left to party in Las Vegas with high rolling donors.

Crowley also interjected herself into the debate, telling the audience that Obama was correct, according to the transcript of Rose Garden remarks.

She wasn't accurate at all – the word terror was used in a very general sense at the end of that address but Obama never called the murders the result of terrorists. Here, read it for yourself: As Americans, let us never, ever forget that our freedom is only sustained because there are people who are willing to fight for it, to stand up for it, and in some cases, lay down their lives for it.  Our country is only as strong as the character of our people and the service of those both civilian and military who represent us around the globe. 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. 

Yes, the word terror was used at the end of his address, but he did not call the murders in Benghazi a terrorist act then, or for weeks afterward, and in fact went out of  his way to play down that issue and instead blame the obscure anti-Islam video. But I have a larger question than the issue of semantics regarding the Benghazi murders.

Why, of all the things a president says on any given day, all the speeches, off-the-cuff remarks, news releases, and official statements, did Candy Crowley have a transcript of one five minute and 35 second appearance in the Rose Garden? How is it that the moderator of last night's circus had access to just that transcript and how is it that she felt obligated to jump into the fray and lie for the president?

If Obama did one thing right last night it was when he emerged from behind Hillary Clinton's skirts – and Crowley's too – and said he is responsible for the travesty in Libya. Fine, now that we have that settled, let's talk about what Obama also said about Libya: And the suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the Secretary of State, our U.N. Ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we've lost four of our own, governor, is offensive.

He stared at Romney as he said that, also referring to being at Andrews Air Force base when the bodies of four Americans were returned home for burial.

What I think is offensive is that our people came home in coffins rather than under their own power after repeated requests were made for beefed up security – and denied – following a series of attacks on US property overseas this summer that received scant media coverage.

I think that if Obama hadn't been such a complete failure across the spectrum of responsibilities as president, those four Americans would not have come home in flag draped coffins that Obama used as a backdrop for his political campaign.

And the picture of those coffins, along with the litany of falsehoods and misinformation that are the hallmarks of the Obama administration, are all the evidence we need that Obama should not spend one second as the president beyond his first term.