If the second presidential debate had been a prize fight, the ringside announcer would have said, “In the right corner, wearing white trunks, is Mitt ("The Gentleman Pugilist”) Romney. In the left corner, wearing black trunks, are Barack (“The Low Blow Kid”) Obama and Candy (“I Wuv You, Barack”) Crowley.

I know that people were complaining about the replacement referees, who officiated at the first few football games this season, but at least they were merely incompetent, they didn’t play favorites.

It figured that at a debate where the live audience was asked not to cheer or boo, the agreement would be broken by Michelle Obama, when she led the applause after Ms. Crowley backed up Obama’s lie about referring to the Benghazi attack as an act of terrorism, in the Rose Garden, on 9/12.

In my eyes, Romney won the night. But he won on a decision. He would have scored a clear knockout if he had been more verbally aggressive. Instead, he came across weakest when he tried to come across strongest, as when he engaged in childish face-to-face squabbling with Obama. It was then that he lowered himself to his opponent’s level.

If I had been prepping Romney for the debate, I would have made certain that he blasted Obama for lying about his plans for immigration reform. During his first two years in the White House, Obama had super majorities in the House and Senate. He didn’t need a single Republican vote, as he proved all too well when he shoved through ObamaCare. In 2008, he lied to Hispanic voters and they rewarded him with two-thirds of their votes. We will have to wait and see if they are equally gullible this time around.

Romney missed a great chance during their exchanges on energy by neglecting to mention that not only had Obama done what he could to destroy the coal industry, to cut oil leases on federal land and doing nothing to counteract soaring gas prices, but he squandered billions of tax dollars investing in solar and wind companies like Solyndra, which quickly went belly up. Apparently, the only collateral these outfits required was proof that their CEOs had donated big money to Obama’s war chest.

What’s more, when asked about the reason that gas is two or three times more expensive in 2012 than when he entered office, Obama said it’s because the economy was so weak in 2009. That is perhaps the looniest answer to a question I’ve ever heard. If the state of the economy had anything to do with the price of gas, shouldn’t the price be the same or even lower in 2012?

Romney also goofed when he let Obama get away with defending Planned Parenthood for providing cancer screenings. They do not offer those services. They merely refer women to places where they are done. Planned Parenthood, which, on top of everything else, flies under false colors, and should be called Planned Non-Parenthood, is in fact the world’s largest abortion mill.

He might also have pointed out that the actual “War on Women” is being waged in the Obama White House, where women doing the exact same job as men, and not an arbitrarily determined comparable job, are paid less than their male counterparts.

When it comes to capitalism, Romney would have done well to point out that Obama is vehemently opposed to the free market version. It’s only crony capitalism that makes his eyes light up and his tail wag.

I also thought that Romney should have done more with the first question from the audience. When 20-year-old Jeremy Epstein, who is apparently a college sophomore, asked Obama what sort of job market he could expect two years down the road, Obama gave one of his canned speeches about the way he planned to improve manufacturing in America. Romney should have pointed out that not only had Obama overseen the loss of many such jobs during his term in office, but, as nice and as necessary as factory jobs are, neither Jeremy nor anyone else goes to college in order to wind up working on an assembly line. But because so many of those jobs require union membership, they are the only ones that Obama really cares about.

Finally, although Romney mentioned the fact that the middle class has been buried for the past four years, it would have been nice if he had mentioned that he heard this from none other than Joe Biden.

As everyone knows or should know by now, the reason that Obama bailed out GM with our tax dollars is because he could then screw the bond holders and turn the company over to his groupies at the UAW.

The most offensive moment during the entire debate came when Obama claimed he had described what occurred at Benghazi as a terrorist attack the day after it occurred, and when Romney tried to rebut, the moderator chimed in to say that Obama was telling the truth. If Obama had actually been telling the truth, we wouldn’t have needed Ms. Crowley to tell us so. The tipoff would have been the moon turning blue and hell freezing over.

Romney’s best moments came when he described his five point plan for restoring America to her full potential and when he described Obama’s agenda as “trickle down government.”

Where Romney’s handlers have let him down is in not providing him with a Reagan-like “There you go again” line with which to underscore every lie Obama tells.

On the other hand, the big story of the evening wasn’t anything Romney said. It was the one-two combination of Obama lying and Candy Crowley backing him up.

If Obama had actually described the attack on our Libyan consulate as a terrorist act, why would he have sent out UN Ambassador Susan Rice five days later on five different Sunday news shows to lay the blame on some dumb video? And why would Obama go to the UN a week later and blame the murder of four Americans on that same video?

For that matter, why would Jay Carney deny the true nature of the attack for two entire weeks, pretending that they needed an FBI investigation to get to the bottom of things, when the consulate cameras and Ambassador Stevens’ own journal told us everything we needed to know about the non-existent demonstration that allegedly led up to the al-Qaeda attack.

And, finally, why 30 days after 9/11, was smarmy Joe Biden still lying about what had taken place in Libya during his debate with Paul Ryan?

Still, I shouldn’t complain. After all, the media has spent four years providing cover for Obama, propping him up and whitewashing his endless lies to the American public. But the one thing they will not abide, we belatedly discovered, is Obama and his stooges lying to them. As a result, instead of the media helping him bury the mess in Libya, they are now helping to bury him.

I found it fascinating that Secretary of State Clinton agreed to go through the motions of falling on her sword for Obama. But that sword was more like a wet noodle. It seems to me that once the Secretary of State takes responsibility for removing security from a consulate and it leads directly to the murder of four members of the diplomatic service, a letter of resignation is called for, and not just a phony pledge to learn from her mistakes and to do better next time.

As we rush towards Election Day, I am reminded of a story a reader sent me a while back. It seems that the director of human resources at a large company was told to hire a black man named Barry to fill an executive position. It was soon discovered that he lacked the necessary skills to do the job, and the director was told to fire him.

When he called the guy into his office to break the bad news, Barry accused him of being a racist.

Patiently, the human resources director explained to Barry that whereas he had been hired because he was black, he was being fired because he was incompetent.

Perhaps during the third debate, Mitt Romney could find the time to share this anecdote. It strikes me as highly relevant.