The consensus opinion of Romney’s speech at VMI today seems to be that it was short on specifics, espoused more or less the same policies in most cases as the ones President Obama already has in place, and dull.

Via Kevin Drum comes a link to Fred Kaplan’s article at Slate. Neither Drum nor Kaplan thought much of it, but Kaplan got vitriolic.

It was expected that he would distort President Obama into a caricature of Jimmy Carter. But it was astonishing to watch Romney spin a daydream of himself as some latter-day George Marshall, bringing peace, prosperity, and hope to a chaotic world—this from a man who couldn’t drop in on the London Olympics without alienating our closest ally and turning himself into a transcontinental laughingstock.

To the extent that Romney recited valid criticisms of Obama’s policies, he offered no alternatives. To the extent he spelled out specific steps he would take to deal with one problem or another, he merely recited actions that Obama has already taken.

Kaplan goes on to take the speech apart, chapter and verse.

The statement that irritates Kaplan most is one that really is egregious. Romney claims he’ll strengthen sanctions on Iran and put aircraft carrier task groups in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. It’s as though nobody bothered to tell him that Obama has done both those things: Iran’s currency has lost 40% of its value due to sanctions and there already are two carrier groups in those places.

I can’t decide whether Romney is stupid, unwilling to listen to advisers who are supposed to know this kind of stuff, or if he’s got CEO syndrome, where he’s going to make up his mind about something and he won’t be deterred by facts.