The immediate headline out of Ann Romney's radio interview this morning was her curious idea as to how to humanize her husband. Asked if Mitt seemed too "stiff" at times, she told WBAL, "Well, you know, I guess we better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out because he is not!" (In a completely unrelated issue, Romney's rival Rick Santorum would fight to ban pornography as President.)
But perhaps the more sensational part of the interview came later, when Ann was asked why her kids called her the "Mitt-Stabilizer." Said Ann: "Mitt can get VERY intense, and I can have the ability to kind of talk him off the rails sometimes." She went on to say that he does the same for her, but her comments rekindle the discussion regarding Mitt Romney's temperament – one that started back in November. Alec MacGillis wrote in The New Republic about what he called the "peculiar anger of Mitt Romney" and how his sons would call their father's outbursts "Mitt-frontations." While Rick Perry was no all-star on the debate stage, he did prove particularly adept at provoking angry flare-ups from Romney, which tend to sound like a robot shot-circuiting.
Mr. Romney campaigned without his wife on Sunday and said he wished Ann was with him "for a lot of reasons." His son Tagg offered one of those reasons, telling Politico "you can tell when she's off the trail for too long -- my dad has got some sharper edges. He's a little less patient." How deep is this reservoir of impatience and anger that apparently bubbles beneath the surface? What does an unstable Mitt Romney look like?
This weekend in a New York times op-ed, David Javerbaum offered the "Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney." His piece included this incredible illustration (below) -- the collision between Mitt Romney and the anti-Romney, which "annihilates both, leaving behind a single electron and a $20 bill." Is an unstable, Ann-less Mitt equivalent to the anti-Romney Javerbaum warns of? And if given long enough to break free, will Unstable Mitt annihilate his campaign? If so, Team Romney may want to work on reuniting their candidate with his wife faster than Mitt can say "Cadillac."