Romney Treads Water, Shifts Positions at Foreign Policy Debate Is Mitt Romney a neoconservative? Or an isolationist? Is he a hard-eyed realist? A democracy-spreading dreamer? Or a strutting warmonger? He has been all those things over the course of his campaign, and he followed a similar pattern at Monday night's debate. His calculation, on purely political terms, seemed to be that it didn't matter. He was rather obviously treading water throughout the debate, though he avoided drowning. Knowing that foreign policy is not high on the list of swing-state concerns, he simply hoped to have a series of pleasant and gravity-free responses to President Obama's withering critique of his previous positions. The problem is that it really does matter. A consistent and deeply held set of foreign policy principles is vital to the success of a presidency; other countries will exploit an erratic course like Mr. Romney's even if American voters don't pay attention. On substance, it was Mr. Romney's worst performance of the three debates. He seemed constantly eager to change the subject, now agreeing with the president, now returning to the old crutch of wild charges, whatever it took to get back to his misery tour of how Mr. Obama has crushed the American economy and its spirit. When it came to Islamic radicalism, he said he wants to spread American influence and foreign aid money to promote Western values, a throwback to the Bush years. The proposal was particularly comical given how little aid will be left if the Paul Ryan budget succeeds in slashing it. "We can't kill our way out of this mess," he said, in full moderate-sounding mode. But he also demanded a military far bigger than the Pentagon itself thinks it needs, ludicrously comparing it in raw numbers to the Navy and Air Force of the first half of the 20th Century. That led to one of the president's best retorts of the campaign season: "Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed," Mr. Obama said. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we're counting ships. Mr. Obama was nimble and sharp throughout the evening, consistently using a vastly superior knowledge of the world, gained through experience, to make Mr. Romney appear to be a low-information armchair critic. He even pinned Mr. Romney into a foolish defense of his inexcusable willingness to let the auto industry collapse, a fumble that could hurt him in the swing states of the upper Midwest. Every time Mr. Romney shrugged and essentially conceded that the administration is already doing the right thing around the world - on Syria, on Iranian sanctions, on drones - Mr. Obama would sarcastically remind viewers that today's moderation was a far cry from the gun-toting positions Mr. Romney used to win the primaries. "What we need to do with respect to the Middle East is strong, steady leadership, not wrong and reckless leadership that is all over the map," Mr. Obama said. And unfortunately, that's the kind of opinions that you've offered throughout this campaign, and it is not a recipe for American strength or keeping America safe over the long term. It is, unfortunately, a recipe for lulling voters into thinking Mr. Romney knows what he's talking about. And with the debates over and the race back to deceptive advertising and speechmaking, his campaign is counting on it.