Mitt Romney’s not-so-excellent adventure abroad (“Romneyshambles,” the Brits are calling it) has been many things: shabby, hilarious, scandalous, an enlivening hoot to a dreary election season. One thing it shouldn’t be, though, is surprising.

Charles Krauthammer, the right-wing commentator who usually finds every excuse to attack Barack Obama—he took Obama’s blinking during a tête-à-tête with Vladimir Putin as a sign of appeasement—pronounced himself befuddled by the GOP candidate’s flare of incompetence.

These sorts of trips, Krauthammer said on Fox News Thursday night, are easy. You express solidarity with the allies, listen, nod your head, and say nice things or nothing at all. Instead, Romney questioned his hosts’ ability to run the Olympics, raised doubts about Londoners’ community spirit, and violated protocol by publicly mentioning a meeting with the head of MI-6. “It’s unbelievable, it’s beyond human understanding, it’s incomprehensible,” Krauthammer, normally a paragon of self-confidence, sputtered. “I’m out of adjectives … I don’t get it.”