Crowley jumped in with the instant fact-check, which helped Obama. TKO: Crowley calls Libya for Obama

President Barack Obama scored a technical knockout on foreign policy Tuesday night, dodging and weaving his way through a tricky question on Libya until debate moderator Candy Crowley declared him the winner.

In Obama’s strongest exchange of the debate, he cast himself as a clear-eyed commander in chief in the hours after he found out that Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, had been killed. And he accused Republican rival Mitt Romney of playing politics with the tragedy.


( PHOTOS: Scenes from the Hofstra debate)

But it was Crowley’s response to a technicality — whether Obama had recognized the attack as an act of terror rather than the result of a spontaneous protest — that helped Obama regain his footing on an issue that has hamstrung his administration for weeks.

“You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror? It was not a spontaneous demonstration — is that what you’re saying?” Romney said. “I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.”

Obama challenged him: “Get the transcript.”

( Also on POLITICO: Obama fights back)

That’s when Crowley jumped in with the instant fact-check: “He did in fact, sir. So, let me — let me call it an act of terror.”

“Can you say that a little louder, Candy?” Obama asked.

“He did call it an act of terror,” Crowley said, before giving Romney some credit. “It did as well take — it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that.”

But the explanation was like fine print after the banner-sized affirmation of Obama’s point. It was too little, too late for Romney, whose supporters took to Twitter and other social media to complain about Crowley.

( See also: Fact-checking the Hofstra debate)

What did Obama actually say in the Rose Garden?

“No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter the character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for,” Obama said at the time. “Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.”

A top White House official called the incident a terrorist attack seven days after Obama's Rose Garden speech. But it took two weeks for Obama's position to become clear.

The tense exchange over Libya was touched off by a question from a member of the audience at the candidates’ town-hall-style debate at Hofstra University on Long Island. He asked Obama who, if anyone, had denied requests for more security at the American consulate in Benghazi before Stevens and three other American diplomats were killed.

The question, posed late in the debate, was a brief detour from domestic policy to foreign policy over 90 minutes. But it was ground that both candidates were looking to fight on, and, though they spoke in sober tones, each candidate launched his best shot at the other.

( Also on POLITICO: Seeking control, Crowley fact-checks Romney)

Obama chastised Romney for the “offensive” suggestion that the White House “would play politics” on the killings in Libya, even as he accused the former Massachusetts governor of exploiting the tragedy for political gain.

Romney said the attack “calls into question the president’s whole policy in the Middle East” and that Obama’s “strategy is unraveling before our very eyes.”

Obama dodged the original question, but he used it to pivot to a contrast with Romney. Obama, in his telling, ordered his aides to beef up security at other diplomatic outposts, demanded an investigation, and vowed “when folks mess with Americans, we go after them.”

Romney “had a very different response” Obama said. “Gov. Romney put out a press release, trying to make political points and that’s not how a commander in chief operates. You don’t turn national security into a political issue, certainly not right when it’s happening.”

Romney suggested it was Obama and his team that had paid too much attention to the political ramifications of the Libya assault.

“It was a terrorist attack and it took a long time for that to be told to the American people. Whether there was some misleading, or instead whether we just didn’t know what happened, you have to ask yourself why didn’t we know five days later when the ambassador to the United Nations went on TV to say that this was a demonstration. How could we have not known?” Romney asked. “But I find more troubling than this, that on — on the day following the assassination of the United States ambassador, the first time that’s happened since 1979, when — when we have four Americans killed there, when apparently we didn’t know what happened, that the president, the day after that happened, flies to Las Vegas for a political fundraiser, then the next day to Colorado for another event, other political event.”

Romney’s aggressive tack set up Obama to talk about his Rose Garden speech the day after the attack and his role in receiving the caskets of the four dead Americans at Andrews Air Force Base a few days later. And it set the stage for the exchange over the word “terror.”

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said Obama may have evaded the initial question but he still has a lot to explain.

“Why would we have expected the president to answer the question head on? He has shown that he’s adept at avoiding the facts not just on the Benghazi terrorist attacks but on a range of issues,” Ros-Lehtinen told POLITICO over email. “It has been over a month and the president refuses to acknowledge any failure on the part of his administration. … We must immediately start looking at broken policies and programs, and ways to fix them. Unfortunately, the President is preoccupied with other matters such as winning an election and not correcting serious flaws in the security of our embassies and consulates abroad.”

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, called Romney’s criticism of the president “an obvious miss and a politicization” of the Libya situation. She also said the president was clear in his Rose Garden remarks, even if the cause of the attack was not yet known.

”We were told the same thing that turned out to be wrong, that there was this demonstration that was going on,” she said of the Intelligence Committee. “The president’s reaction at that time was, regardless of the circumstances, that this was an act of terror. … I don’t agree with that analysis that just technically the president was correct. I think that’s what he meant,” Schakowsky said.”

Obama told Crowley that he takes responsibility for U.S. security and that the proverbial buck does not stop with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“I’m the president and I’m always responsible, “ he said.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 12:32 a.m. on October 17, 2012.