President Obama is playing the assertive husband in his campaign version of an old TV show, "Who Do You Trust?" Mitt Romney should stop playing the passive wife.

Romney can't be trusted as president, Obama told those attending a campaign rally in Dayton, Ohio on Oct. 24:

"There's no more serious issue in a presidential campaign than trust... Trust matters. You want to know that the person who's applying to be your president and commander in chief is trustworthy, that he means what he says, that he's not just making stuff up depending on whether it's convenient or not."

Romney has limited his response to pointing to Obama's broken promises about the economy and jobs.
But what about Benghazi, in light of Obama's pledge on Jan. 21, 2009, that "transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency?" Romney is the only person who can compel Obama to answer questions about the Benghazi assault, because Obama won't hold a press conference. And Big Bird's beak is evidently sealed.

Romney should confront Obama with the newly-released emails about the Benghazi attack reported by Fox News on Oct. 24:

"A series of internal State Department emails obtained by Fox News shows that officials reported within hours of last month's deadly consulate attack in Libya that militant group Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility.
"The emails provide some of the most detailed information yet about what officials knew in the initial hours after the attack. And it again raises questions about why U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, apparently based on intelligence assessments, would claim five days after the attack that it was a 'spontaneous' reaction to protests over an anti-Islam film.

"Ansar al-Sharia is a group in eastern Libya that sympathizes with Al Qaeda. A member of the group suspected of participating in the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi has been arrested and is being held in Tunisia.

"The emails obtained by Fox News were sent by the State Department to a variety of national security platforms, whose addresses have been redacted, including the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence.

"Fox News was told that an estimated 300 to 400 national security figures received these emails in real time almost as the raid was playing out and concluding. People who received these emails work directly under the nation's top national security, military and diplomatic officials, Fox News was told."

The emails are identified "(SBU)," meaning Sensitive But Unclassified. They were "unclassified" because the information in them was posted on social networks on the Internet.

Except for conservative media and CBS, most media outlets aren't covering the cover-up that portends to be worse than Watergate. Nixon lied but nobody died.

Both CNSNews and CBS have reported that the White House refuses to comment about the emails. The New York Times and the Washington Post, the Watergate paper of record, have buried the story on the back pages. The Post's endorsement of Obama was page one on Oct. 25, followed by an editorial on Oct. 26.

Obama might want to put Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on bayonet watch, judging by her comments about the emails during her press conference on Oct. 24. She barely looked up and chuckled inappropriately about "an attack like this."

Clinton dismissed the internet posting as not being "evidence." Somebody took the posting seriously enough to dispatch Marines to the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli because the posting called for an attack there.

According to Bloomberg News, Oct. 25:

"Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the U.S. military lacked intelligence needed to respond during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, during which Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed. 'The basic principle is don't deploy into harm's way without knowing what's going on," Panetta said today at a Pentagon news conference. He said he and top generals 'felt very strongly' that deploying forces sooner wasn't the right option."

Seven hours of real time video taken by a Predator drone circling above the attack site wasn't sufficient intelligence to send an F-18 to strafe a crowd waving guns and torching the consulate?

Romney should take "Who Do You Trust" up a notch with a few simple questions for Obama:

1. Why wasn't security at the consulate increased as Ambassador Chris Stevens requested in light of two previous attacks on the consulate?

2. Why for two weeks, did you, Secretary Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, Vice President Joe Biden, and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney blame a video that you knew had nothing to do with the attack?

3. Where were you when the attack was being watched in real time for at least seven hours?

4. Why didn't you send help?

5. Where is the transparency you promised the American people?

6. How can we trust you as President?

Obama told Rolling Stone magazine in an interview posted Oct. 25:

"You know, kids have good instincts. They look at the other guy and say, 'Well, that's a bulls******, I can tell.'"

Kids aren't the only ones.

Jan LaRue is senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union.