Before Benghazi, Obama was running on Libya as a success story

Tim Carney:

"President Obama enlisted our allies, built the coalition, shared the burden, so that today, without a single American casualty, Moammar Gadhafi is gone, and the people of Libya are free," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in his primetime speech at the Democratic Convention in 2012.

"From Burma to Libya to South Sudan," Obama said the next day as he accepted the nomination, "we have advanced the rights and dignity of all human beings."

Previewing Obama's foreign-policy debate against Romney, the AP reported on Sept. 10, "The president will offer a spirited defense of his aggressive record in pursuing al-Qaida, the killing of Osama bin Laden and the collapse of Moammar Gadhafi's government in Libya."

Just before the convention, Obama proxy and Clinton-administration alumnus Bill Richardson went on the road for Obama, citing Libya as a frequent talking point. "We have got a president that brilliantly dealt with the situation in Libya, with the Arab Spring."
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And Secretary Hillary Clinton, we've recently learned, was even planning a victory lap in Libya for the days before the 2012 election — until an insurgent raid killed four Americans in Benghazi.

"Emails indicate senior State Department officials, including Mills, Sullivan, and Huma Abedin," the latest Benghazi committee report explains, "were preparing for a trip by the Secretary to Libya in October 2012." Hillary had held up the Libya regime change as "smart power at its best."
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This adds context to the reasons why they chose to push the bogus video story as an excuse for their failures at Benghazi.   While Republicans have been wondering what Obama was doing on the night of the attacks, I suspect he was in a desperate meeting trying to come up with a political explanation for the abject failure of his success story.