Ronald Reagan won the election of 1980 because of a single sentence. Recall, we had endured three and a half years of total incompetence from one of the major fools of all time, Jimmy Carter. Nevertheless, the Mainstream Media was totally on Carter’s side. The liberals had painted Reagan as a pitiful, doddering has-been cowboy actor. They sought to portray Carter as a brainy and trustworthy peanut farmer and nuclear engineer (neither of which he was, of course). The polls favored Carter.

Then came the Carter-Reagan debate. Carter began to go on a long winded harangue about some imaginary complaint. Reagan looked at him like a long suffering employer confronting a malingering clerk and said simply, “There you go again.”

In an instant, Reagan was revealed as smart, sharp, strong, and unable to be bullied and the election was his.

Mitt Romney had just that kind of opportunity last week — and took an entirely different direction. When the question about Libya began the debate, Gov. Romney could have said, “More in sorrow than in anger, I must note that you and Mrs. Clinton and Susan Rice have concocted the most egregious series of coverups of a diplomatic and defense failure that has happened in this country since Pearl Harbor.

“You allowed these murders to happen. Then you covered up, as is your custom, by blaming the United States instead of the terrorists whom you knew from the first day were the killers.

“We know you will not apologize. We also know that when I am President, we will not cover up for al Qaeda. And we will classify Major Hasan’s mass murders as terrorism, which they are, and we will stop doing the kowtow to terrorists anywhere.”

Then, when Mr. Obama sputtered about Mr. Romney “politicizing” the murders in Benghazi, Gov. Romney could have said, “There you go again, still covering up. Since when is it unseemly in a democracy to point out the blatant incompetence of an administration? Are you going to put me in prison the same way you put that poor devil who made the irrelevant video about Mohammed in prison? Is that your plan?”

It is not too late for Gov. Romney to do this in commercials. But he obviously has chosen conciliation and affection, and it may well work for him. Let’s hope it does. Maybe the times and the electorate have changed so much that the admonition that “he who holdeth his temper is greater than he who conquereth a city…” wins elections, if followed. I assume Mr. Romney knows what he’s doing.

Speaking of “there you go again,” when the heck is the GOP going after Mr. Obama for his condescension in discussing aircraft carriers and submarines? When is Governor Romney going to ask, “Mr. Obama, what the hell do you know about submarines or aircraft carriers? When did you, a peace activist and community organizer, get to be an expert on defense hardware?”

Is it not terrifying, by the way, literally life or death terrifying, that Mr. Obama explicitly plans for unilateral disarmament? Isn’t amazing that in a world as dangerous as ours, he plans deep cuts in the Navy, Army, Air Force, and Marines? Isn’t it amazing that while Iran races toward nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them on Israel, Western Europe, and the USA, Mr. Obama refuses the slightest effort to build an ABM defense? And that he plans to unilaterally disarm the U.S. nuclear force in the face of enemies with nuclear weapons? Whose side is he on? This by itself makes a vote for Romney a necessity.

And while we’re at it, here is an idea that my pals at FNC put in my head: The U.S. has satellite photos of everything on earth. There are cameras at every U.S. consulate. When rockets are being fired at a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, there is data about it going to the President immediately if he is not playing basketball or hanging with Jay-Z. That means Mr. Obama might well have known that the attack was happening as it was happening.

That means it was probably the Big Kahuna himself who screwed up big time. Suddenly it all makes sense: why go into total panic mode, total lying mode, get the media into PROTEKTO BAMA RAMA mode unless the boss himself is on the line?

It all makes sense now. It just now hangs together. It isn’t some State Department officer who denied aid to the U.S. Ambassador. It was Barry himself. Think about it. If it was Mr. Obama himself who let the ambassador and staff be murdered, then there absolutely has to be a coverup.

Finally, just for tonight, let me ask my loyal pals in Spectator land, have you ever seen such nerve as for Barack Hussein Obama to brag about how much domestic oil and gas production have gone up in the past few years? That hypocrite. Yes, the energy minerals tally has gone way up — with Mr. Obama fighting the oil companies every step of the way. Oil and gas production have risen despite Mr. Obama’s hatred of oil and gas and yet he has the brass to brag about it? That creep, and yet why hasn’t Governor Romney beaten him to a pulp over it?

Mr. Romney may win this election. I hope he does. But if he does, it will not be because of following the road map that Ronald Regan laid down for him. A soft answer turneth away wrath. Does it win elections? We will see.