Listening to Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney in Michigan ALBION, Mich. - Listening to Mitt Romney immediately after Rick Santorum is a bit like flipping through the Cliffs Notes version of a novel that was too long and painful to read in full. Wherever he gives a speech, Mr. Santorum gives the impression he is not so much running for president as auditioning for a fellowship at a conservative think tank. He is desperate to show how much he knows about every issue, how hard he's worked on every issue, and how much further to the right he is on every issue than the other presidential candidates. In doing so, he frequently loses his audience in a dense forest of policy minutae or over-the-top outrage. Saying, for example, how he "almost threw up" after reading John F. Kennedy's views on church and state. Mr. Romney doesn't bother to play in the deep end. His speeches now are simply strings of slogans, spliced together at random, criticizing President Obama or his rivals. He never conveys the sense of having really thought hard about an issue and reaching a deliberate decision. Take energy, for example. At a chamber of commerce breakfast in Livonia, Mich., this morning, Mr. Santorum spent nearly 10 minutes explaining why high gasoline prices were Mr. Obama's fault for not allowing more drilling, and for over-regulating energy producers. "There have been hundreds of thousands of wells drilled in this country using hydraulic fracturing," he said, "but now all of a sudden since there's a boom, we now have the attention of Washington, and were going to try to do something to slow it down." This is nonsense, of course - there is now a huge supply of natural gas in this country, and domestic oil production is at an eight-year peak. Gasoline prices are up because of growing demand and global instability, and the president could drill in every national park and lift every regulation without affecting them. But the facts don't get in Mr. Santorum's way when he has worked up a lather, and he regaled his listeners with multiple stories of missed opportunities for pipelines in Alaska, North Dakota, and Canada. Mr. Romney had an energy section in his speech today, too, and it lasted about 30 seconds. Standing in an industrial caster factory here in Albion, in south-central Michigan, he ran through the tired cliché that the president is only interested in solar and wind energy. "If I'm president of the United States, I will open up drilling for our gas and oil and get our coal flowing again!" he promised, adding that he would also approve the Keystone oil pipeline vetoed by Mr. Obama. That was it and then he swept on to the next topic, getting fuzzier by the moment as he professed his love for the country, his love for the way Americans put their hand over their heart as they sing the national anthem, even his preference for America over Europe. "I love the American way," he said. Europe is not right for America, America is right for America! Mr. Romney appears to be ahead of Mr. Santorum in tomorrow's Michigan primary, but pollsters are reporting little enthusiasm for either candidate. It's not hard to see why.