I suspect that Romney's also just not listening to his advisors. You can give your candidate all the advice in the world, but he doesn't have to follow it. That's how the tax returns thing has to have gone down - Romney drew a line early, his advisors HAD to be smart enough to see that releasing them all after he won the nomination was best, but he's stubborn and doesn't like the little people dictating to him. That's the only narrative that makes sense to me. Every campaign is going to get gaffes here and there, but Romney's has had a number of errors that are unforgivable precisely because they're completely unforced. He could have released his returns months ago. He could have waited 12 hours to release a statement about Libya. He could have vetted his convention speakers to be on-message all the time. And on and on.
I don't want him to be president, so I'm not that unhappy with it, but I'm also aware he could become president, so I'm very unhappy with the prospect of someone so unfocused and incompetent at this political game (while obviously being very competent elsewhere) being so close to the White House.