Last night's Libya exchange will only end up helping Romney

First, any prolonged discussion of Libya obviously hurts the president, not Romney, and the mangled muddle in this encounter fairly begs for clarification in the next debate, which is supposed to focus on foreign policy anyway. On that occasion Romney may even be able to make clear that on his basic indictment of Obama’s ineptitude and confusion he was right while the president and, yes, Candy Crowley, were wrong.

Which raises the second hidden advantage for the GOP in the second debate’s most uncomfortable and confusing moments. Crowley’s misguided malfeasance in the moderator’s role should produce a morning-after apology, but even if it doesn’t it feeds into the powerful (and largely accurate) conservative meta-narrative about prevailing media bias. Can anyone open-mindedly read the transcripts of the debate, and go back to the transcript of the Rose Garden statement that Crowley recklessly mischaracterized, and honestly suggest that she acted the part of an effective honest broker?

Polling suggests that hefty majorities of Americans (including most of the all-important independents) already assume that major media report the news with a generous dose of political bias.