The Benghazi bleed is draining Obama and Democrats, with the consequence yet to be seen. If he loses, it will be one reason why; if he wins, he will run into a headwind of investigations and inquiries that will get his second term off to an ugly beginning.

Either way, it has put an end for the time being at least to the Democrats’ latest effort to dig themselves out of the foreign policy hole they dug themselves into in the late l960s, and from which they have yet to emerge. They tried with Jimmy Carter, ex-career naval officer (and protegee of the famously hard-boiled Admiral Rickover). They tried with Michael Dukakis, who posed in a tank. They tried with John Kerry, who reported for duty until he was sandbagged by his former naval associates, who resented both his grandstanding in the Pacific and the anti-war screeds he emitted once he came home.