Hurricane Sandy is helping drown media coverage of several White House scandals in the crucial run-up to Election Day.

The storm has also dampened coverage of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s progress in critical Midwest swing states.

On Monday, the networks’ cameras were pointed at Obama as he stood at a White House podium to sketch out his administration’s response to the oncoming hurricane...

The cameras weren’t pointed, however, at the Obama administration’s proliferating scandals, including the Justice Department’s “Fast & Furious” gun-smuggling project, the Treasury Department’s decision to strip Delphi Automotive workers of their pensions and the administration’s intelligence leaks.

The cameras also weren’t pointed at the top GOP officials who recently began demanding the White House provide support for Obama’s claims that he directed his deputies to immediately secure US diplomatic sites after jihadis assaulted the Benghazi consulate on Sept. 11.

However, there’s no evidence that nearby US forces -- such fast-moving jets, helicopter-borne rescue forces or missile-armed drones -- were rushed to help either the besieged officials in the diplomatic compound or the CIA officials in the nearby CIA annex.

Instead, Fox News has cited unnamed US sources in Libya who said rescue attempts were countermanded three times.

“If in fact [Obama] did issue such an order, and the order was not carried out by the military, then Congress needs to get to the bottom of it,” said Republican Rep. Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

”But I don’t think he issued such an order...[He] did nothing to help our people on the ground,” McKeon told Fox News on Monday. “The president’s leadership has been woefully lacking, [and it] looks to me like a cover-up, they just want to keep everything under wraps, until after the election”...

The media has also declined to highlight the dramatic testimony from the father of one of the two guards killed at the CIA annex...

Similarly, Hurricane Sandy has minimized media pressure on the White House to respond to a new House report on the international Fast & Furious scandal, which contributed to the death of hundreds of Mexicans.

The smuggling of military-style weapons to drug gangs was a “deliberate strategy created at the highest levels of the Justice Department aimed at identifying the leaders of a major gun trafficking ring,” according to a new congressional report issued Oct. 29.

The report -- produced by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, the senior Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee and Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House oversight committee -- blames top Obama officials “for failing to supervise and for missing basic red flags”...

GOP officials are also trying to publicize the Delphi scandal, in which Treasury Department officials agreed in 2009 to slash pensions for 20,000 blue collar workers at the company, while protecting pensions for unionized workers at General Motors.

The decision boosted the payoff for new investors, who had allies in the administration.

On Saturday, for example, Rep. Paul Ryan -- Romney’s running mate -- met with Delphi workers in Ohio, to highlight the White House’s choices.

“You see, the president likes to go around Ohio talking about how he saved the auto industry, how the auto bailout was such a success,” said Ryan. But “he hasn’t talked to these Ohio Delphi salaried employees. … This is one of those examples of the government picking winners and losers,” he declared in the critical battleground state.

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Editor's Note: Living in a place where Sandy disrupted our existence, we empathize with those who were brutally affected by the hurricane. But with the well-being of the nation hanging in the balance in an election just a few days away, we must force ourselves to do at least two things at once: recover from a natural disaster and pay attention to presidential politics. To say "politics can wait," as Gov. Christie did (and we sympathize with his situation), cannot be the standard for voters...this election is too important.