Are the media protecting Obama, pre-election, from the full impact of the Benghazi story?

"What we already know about Benghazi is a scandal of the highest order..."

... the ambassador asked for more security after a series of terrorist threats and attacks, but didn’t get it, even on the anniversary of September 11. The administration knew that four Americans had been killed in a successful terrorist attack by an al Qaeda affiliate, but lied about the event for weeks in hopes of minimizing political fallout. Extraordinarily courageous Americans fought a seven-hour gun battle against well-armed and well-organized terrorists who vastly outnumbered them before finally succumbing, during which time the Obama administration did nothing. And when the bodies of the dead Americans were returned to the United States, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton misappropriated the occasion to deliver politically-motivated lies, both to the victims’ survivors and to the American people. All of that we now know for sure. If, in addition, there is credible evidence that American soldiers, fighting desperately for their lives against our country’s most bitter enemies, called for help but were cynically left to perish in order to protect Barack Obama’s petty re-election campaign, Obama will not only lose the election but will be turned out of office in disgust by a clear majority of voters. Reporters and editors know this. It will be interesting to see how they respond during the coming days: will they do their jobs, or will they assist their candidate with his cover-up?

I presume they would say — if they deigned to answer Power Line's question — that the Benghazi story is too complicated and inflammatory to resolve in the narrow time before the election and that it's unfair to dump this hugely burdensome issue on the President now. It would have an undue effect on the minds of the voters, who must be protected from an emotional flare-up which will keep them from weighing all the issues in the proper proportion. This is especially true — they would not say out loud — when the skewing goes against their preferred candidate. Of course, an equivalent issue affecting the incumbent in 2004 would have been splattered everywhere.

A Romney victory would give us the benefit of leaving the Benghazi scandal in the past. It will still be important to investigate, but it won't — like the Watergate scandal, after the Nixon re-election — cripple a sitting President.