Had George W. Bush then responded to those events by jetting to Vegas for a fundraiser and campaign rally marked by a rote and emotion-less nod towards the victims and a callous transition to the difficulty of campaign life for political volunteers, well, the hysteria that would have followed would have melted wires.
Because Barack Obama is the MSM's favoritist president ever, however, when these events followed that outrageous attack on Wednesday, the Manhattan-Beltway media did not even pause from their unremitting attack on...Mitt Romney, of course.
When the president compounded the day's fiasco by announcing to a stunned foreign policy elite via Telemundo that Egypt was not an "ally," much of the MSM didn't even bother to note the pratfall, nor the fact that it was juxtaposed with the president's chest thumping dismissal of Mitt Romney as as "shoot-first, aim later" candidate.
It was as though Jimmy Carter had campaigned on his hostage release negotiation skills in 1980, or Bill Clinton on a chastity platform in the mid-terms of 1998.
Perhaps the pressure on American media from declining ad sales and dwindling circulation and viewership has caused a collective crack-up. The elite media have always been left but rarely have they been so collectively delusional.
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By Thursday night the MSM's effort was underway to validate their shared embarrassment by proclaiming that Mitt Romney was "toning down" his criticism of President Obama even though the Republican nominee blasted away at the president's assault on defense spending in the day's one open media event. CNN, NBC, Politico all relayed their "toned down" judgment despite the obvious compounding of Wednesday's display of bias transmitted thereby.
It is a collapse. A complete collapse. As Mark Steyn said on my show Thursday (the full transcript of that interview is here), the MSM is "acting like a deranged, drugged up mob."
And everyone but the media knows it.
Meanwhile the Arab world is in a spasm of violence that the president seems almost indifferent to, so remote is his demeanor. "No drama Obama" is looking more and more like Chance the Gardener Obama, the "Being There" president in fact being only in campaign mode and detached from even the most pressing aspects of his job.
I can only conclude that he took his already-evaporated convention bounce as a predictor of the November vote and a ratification of his own immense self-esteem. Fine by Team Romney which must be clinking glasses at the president's cluelessness and the media's enabling of his spiral into retirement. The likely voter polls show a dead heat nationally, and the map is full of Romney paths, with Wisconsin heading Romney's way and Obama's alleged lead in Ohio gone in the last Rasmussen survey (and never existing in the Columbus Dispatch poll.)
Obama threw everything at Romney, including hundreds of millions in negative ads, Bill Clinton in prime time, and all of the Manhattan-Beltway media, but it is a tie and the disaster in the Middle East is just sinking in.
The president appears certain that he will not have to leave the White House next January, so assured is he of his charm and competence. But like his speech in Cairo long ago or his appeal on behalf of the Chicago Olympics, the president is nothing if not overly generous in his own estimate of his own abilities.
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