Obama and Romney's dueling responses to the Libyan crisis: 4 takeaways

The killing of a U.S. ambassador thrusts foreign policy into the center of the presidential campaign, giving voters a chance to compare the candidates' mettle

President Obama, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, makes a statement about the death of U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens on Sept. 12: "The world must stand together to uneq
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The partisan bickering of the presidential campaign never really takes a break, even when tragedy strikes. Case in point: Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three of his staff were killed Tuesday night in a violent assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi by protesters angered by an anti-Muslim film that had been disseminated on the internet. Despite the fact that Stevens was the first U.S. envoy to have been killed abroad in more than two decades — on the 11-year anniversary of 9/11 no less — the Obama and Romney campaign almost instantly turned on each other. Mitt Romney's campaign blasted the Obama administration for its "disgraceful" response to the violence, while Team Obama said it was "shocked" that Romney would politicize an international crisis. And with that skirmish, foreign policy took center stage for the first time in the campaign. Here, four takeaways from the campaigns' dueling responses:

1. Romney jumped the gun

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