What they didn’t debate

How about that. The attack on the Benghazi embassy – the issue that’s captured so many pixels lately – hardly a factor in last night’s debate.

And the other big foreign policy coup – killing Osama bin Laden – it was Mr. Romney who brought it up.

“I congratulate him on taking out Osama Bin Laden and going after the leadership in al-Qaeda. But we can’t kill our way out of this mess,” Romney said.

We can’t kill our way out of this mess. Except later he accuses the President of having gone on an “apology tour”, and Obama’s thinking “wait a minute – I apologize too much, but yet – I kill bad guys too much?”

“Nothing Governor Romney just said is true,” said President Obama.

But here’s the challenge Romney faced: he’s in a debate; he’s got to accuse the other guy of something, but they’re just not that different on foreign policy.

Both want to stop Iran from getting the bomb, they both back Israel, they both would make sure we’re the biggest cop on the beat – even if it did mean going back to horses and bayonets.

And I found all this reassuring because the poll numbers are again pointing to that uniquely American type of election where the winner loses.

And once again the electoral college will protect us from choosing the president most people actually want, thereby guaranteeing that half of us will spend four years tweeting how ticked off we are.

But that would be too bad because the reason the race is so close is that for all the efforts to paint this as a stark choice – government versus private industry, Obamacare versus Romneycare, apologies versus no apologies – if you accept Mitt Romney’s most recent positions, America is not going to be that different either way.