The Washington Post played a game of “Hide the Benghazi” in its front-page story on Obama nominating Susan Rice to be the new National Security Adviser. The headline beat around the bush: “Obama signals new approach on national security: A Bigger U.S. Role Abroad. In shuffle, Rice replaces Donilon as adviser.”

Reporter Scott Wilson announced “a major shuffle” and “an ideological shift” (let’s guess toward more humanitarian intervention). But you’d have to wait until paragraph twenty-two for the B-word:

In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Mitt Romney declared “I am an unapologetic believer in the greatness of this country...I am not ashamed of American power.”

To Washington Post reporters Scott Wilson and Nia-Malika Henderson, this rhetoric sounded outdated and unrealistic:

President Obama's weekly radio address on Saturday devoted the entire hour to a hyper-partisan, long-winded, meandering speech about his Republican critics being too -- wait for it! -- partisan.

Fortunately for him, a compliant national media would simply forward the attack on their own pages and never pause long enough to smell the irony.

In the middle of alleged job offers, controversial nominations, and unpopular bills shoved through Congress along party lines, President Obama complained about "dreary and familiar politics" from the opposition, and the media immediately took his side.

Up first was the Washington Post's Scott Wilson who used the 44 blog on Saturday to cover the speech:

Monday’s Washington Post should be retitled Washington Happy Talk. Topping the right side of the page is the headline "Democrats upbeat on health-care bill" and below that, the headline "Obama priority shift could help his party." This is quite a shift from the gloom-and-doom days of President Bush.

The first story, by Post reporter Dan Eggen, noted the obvious point that votes are still lacking, but he played up what he called "the most optimistic talk" on the Sunday shows. Well, not exactly. He reported White House spokesman Robert Gibbs "declared ‘this is the climactic week for health-care reform.’"

But Gibbs was bolder than that. On CBS, he promised that by next Sunday, "[We]'ll be talking about the House having passed that proposal and us being a signature away from health care reform in this country."

Eggen used to be a Justice Department reporter pounding away at what liberals considered the Bush administration’s war on the Constitution. But this is all he could muster on the "Slaughter solution" talk in paragraph 15: