At the con­clu­sion of last night’s last pres­i­den­tial debate, which focused on for­eign pol­i­cy, not­ed for­eign-pol­i­cy wonk and for­mer Repub­li­can vice-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Sarah Palin appeared on Fox News to deliv­er her expert analysis.

No doubt this latest version of Romney makes perfect sense in the world that he has constructed inside his own mind, where there must be some grand unified theory that reconciles all the shape-shifting and contradictions that define his political career.

​“There were so many untruths spewed by Oba­ma tonight. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Rom­ney just didn’t have time to answer them all,” Palin opined, adding that she sure does wish the media would call out Barack Oba­ma on all his lies.

On his pre-debate show ear­li­er in the evening, Fox host Bill O’Reilly posed his own dim view of the pres­i­dent. ​“Many, includ­ing Gov­er­nor Rom­ney, believe that Pres­i­dent Obama’s for­eign pol­i­cy has weak­ened Amer­i­ca and embold­ened our ene­mies,” accord­ing to O’Reilly.

Giv­en the way Palin and O’Reilly framed it, you might think the debate pit­ted two men who hold extra­or­di­nar­i­ly diverg­ing view­points. But the main dif­fer­ence between them, as it turned out, was the size of their lapel pins.

Recall that in the 2008 cam­paign, Oba­ma had briefly resist­ed wear­ing a flag pin on the basis that it’s a cheap and emp­ty expres­sion of patri­o­tism (not his actu­al words), before buck­ling under the pres­sure. And last night the grand old flag was pinned to both men’s jack­ets, as always. But Romney’s was just a bit big­ger and bolder.

​“My flag is big­ger,” seems to be Romney’s gen­er­al strat­e­gy at this point. That is, he accepts Obama’s ideas and poli­cies, but promis­es to super­size them. Oba­ma is a friend of Israel? Israel and I are total­ly BFF! Oba­ma has increased defense spend­ing every year? I’ll increase it by two tril­lion dollars!

Romney’s prob­lem in try­ing to dis­tin­guish him­self on for­eign pol­i­cy is that the main line of attack he antic­i­pat­ed using against Oba­ma — the recent attacks on the U.S. Con­sulate in Libya that result­ed in the mur­der of four Amer­i­cans — has fiz­zled. Though Repub­li­cans have tried hard for weeks to gain trac­tion with the issue, accus­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of incom­pe­tence (or worse) and a cov­er-up, the tragedy is too dis­tant to be a game-chang­er. And the Oba­ma administration’s defense of its behav­ior has most­ly held up under the GOP’s scrutiny.

If the issue res­onat­ed, Libya would no doubt have been the cen­ter­piece of an argu­ment for a more hawk­ish for­eign pol­i­cy. But Rom­ney bare­ly touched the sub­ject. Instead, he made the oblig­a­tory nois­es about being tough on Iran and then went the Oba­ma-plus route. Oba­ma believes in build­ing strate­gic alliances? Me too — but more so!

Maybe the most star­tling moment of the night was hear­ing Rom­ney talk about build­ing the civic infra­struc­ture of for­eign nations, about the impor­tance of fos­ter­ing edu­ca­tion and gen­der equal­i­ty in the Mid­dle East, and about work­ing with our allies in the region. A Repub­li­can hasn’t talked like that since George W. Bush, who, in a pres­i­den­tial debate 12 years ago this month, said, ​“If we’re an arro­gant nation, [oth­er nations will] resent us. … And our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of pow­er, and that’s why we’ve got to be hum­ble, and yet project strength in a way that pro­motes freedom.”

Well, we know how that worked out.

Did Bush ever mean those words about humil­i­ty? Did Rom­ney mean his words about coop­er­a­tion last night? If appear­ances are any indi­ca­tion, Rom­ney seems more com­fort­able in the guise of con­cil­ia­tor than hawk; while for Bush, the post‑9/​11 war­mon­ger­ing and ​“they hate us for our free­dom” speech­es seemed to come naturally.

It might have been a win­ning strat­e­gy if Rom­ney had sold him­self as Oba­ma-plus all along, some­how man­ag­ing to win the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry as a heal­er. But it seems like a dubi­ous strat­e­gy at this point. It’s hard to imag­ine that it made Palin and O’Reilly and their ilk hap­py, hear­ing their can­di­date bill him­self as a slight­ly enhanced ver­sion of a man they dis­dain as a ser­i­al liar and a denier of Amer­i­can exceptionalism.

From the pro­gres­sive per­spec­tive, mean­time, it’s a litle dis­cour­ag­ing that it’s so easy for Rom­ney to become one with the Democ­rats on for­eign pol­i­cy. Sim­ply by adding a touch of dove to his hawk­ish­ness, Rom­ney can make him­self almost indis­tin­guish­able from Obama.

No doubt this lat­est ver­sion of Rom­ney makes per­fect sense in the world that he has con­struct­ed inside his own mind, where there must be some grand uni­fied the­o­ry that rec­on­ciles all the shape-shift­ing and con­tra­dic­tions that define his polit­i­cal career.

What would he actu­al­ly do, though, with the pow­er of the pres­i­den­cy? Would he be an enhanced Oba­ma or anoth­er Bush? Some­thing else? Which ver­sion of him­self would emerge is prob­a­bly as much a mys­tery to Rom­ney, at this point, as it is to every­one else. One prays we’ll nev­er find out.