Will the Benghazi debacle cost Obama the election?

Libya looks like it was a perfect storm for the administration. A humanitarian intervention that never had a lot of support in the United States had not only failed to create a peaceful and stable democratic Libya; it was also increasingly clear that al-Qaeda and other terror groups were becoming much stronger in the chaos following the U.S.-led attack on Qaddafi. This political problem seems to have made it more difficult for the administration to face the full implications of the deteriorating security situation in Libya. And there was certainly no appetite for a fuller public discussion of the Libya mess in the weeks before an election.

It is not clear whether these considerations influenced efforts to keep U.S. security at a lower level in the country. That would genuinely be an explosive scandal. However, from the Obama administration’s point of view, the discussion of Libya these days is a bad thing. It seems clearer and clearer that the critics of the Libyan intervention had a better understanding of the risks and costs than the supporters.