At campaign events, Mitt Romney can come across as insincere. In presidential debates, his performance has been uneven. In his television ads, he seems too good to be true - too handsome, too rich, too articulate and too wholesome to have much in common with the people whose votes he seeks. But put him in a boardroom and Romney shines.

The former Massachusetts governor recently met with the Monitor's editorial board. His performance was impressive. He is articulate and knowledgeable. He doesn't come across as an ideologue - that would be tough given his history of changed positions - but as a pragmatist, a guy who gets things done. None of that was surprising. The surprise was that Romney, whose Mormon faith and mega-millions isolate him from the experience of many Americans, came across as a pretty regular guy.

Romney does his homework and knows which issues to stress with a given audience. He is convincing when he says that as president he would address global warming and develop an energy policy to minimize America's dependence on imported oil. His solution to the latter, however, is a massive expansion in the use of nuclear energy coupled with an intensive effort to deal with the resultant radioactive waste.

On foreign policy, he's a hawk. He backs President Bush's war effort and speaks in Bush's apocryphal terms when discussing the dangers facing the nation. Iran, he said, is a great threat to civilization.

The most important civil liberty he wants the government to protect, Romney said, is the right to be kept alive. He believes the president is right to prioritize domestic security and declined to say whether waterboarding is torture. The best way to protect the nation, he said, is with intelligence.

Romney was at his most convincing when emphasizing his willingness to accept good ideas no matter which party they came from and to put partisanship aside if it will lead to a solution. As proof, he cited his work with Sen. Ted Kennedy to change the health care system in Massachusetts.

The way Romney describes it, his style of governance is reminiscent of another politician known for reaching across the aisle - ready for this? - Gov. John Lynch, a fellow boardroom veteran who's been successful in bringing rivals together. But Romney will find that, weighed down as it is with money, lobbyists and ego, Washington is almost impossible to move, even for a politician with the strongest intentions.

Romney hit the right points when outlining the problems the next president will face: the war in Iraq, protecting the nation from terrorists, addressing illegal immigration, repairing international relations, strengthening the economy, creating a health care system that doesn't leave 47 million people uninsured, reducing the debt, and addressing the eventual shortfalls in Social Security, Medicaid and, most of all, Medicare. He was much less specific, and credible, in discussing solutions.

On Social Security, for example, Romney listed choices like raising the retirement age or changing the way benefits are indexed but failed to say which ones he would take. Tax increases, for anything, he said, were not an option.

Politicians who say early on whose ox they intend to gore rarely are elected, so Romney's evasions were to be expected. But at some point, he'll have to be specific about how he intends to solve the nation's problems or hope that voters take it on faith that he can get the job done.