Lava From Mount Mitt

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If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend you watch the whole 20 minutes of Romney’s appearance on the Jan Mickelson show from last March.  (The tape started circulating in August, and here is a summary at The Caucus.  You’ll get the gist, by the way, even if you skip ahead to about the 11th or 12th minute.)

I’m not concerned so much about the rhetorical particulars as I am about the temperment.  For those who say the Democrats have issues with composure, write in Bambi on your shopping list.  For those who say Romney only got exercised during the commercial break and didn’t realize the camera was running, you would have thought a seasoned politician — one not so prideful and thin-skinned — would still have known better.

Yesterday, the NYT had a background story profiling Romney’s religion, with an image of the young Mitt’s missionary group in France.  (With the Mickelson combat in mind, all I could focus on was Romney’s grip on that book.)  With the Republican candidates coming into sharper view, the most insightful commentary on this chronological sequence of screen grabs goes back to what Rove said, which is:  “Politics is what happens with the sound off.”

This guy is strung so tight, he’s about to explode just from (off-the-air) resistance from a clever Christian conservative radio talking head.

Four years of this guy — and this kind of tension — after what we’ve been through?  It’s scary.  Very scary.

(screen shots: govmittromney via youtube)