It’s funny how little it can take to turn a person off or to cast someone in a bad light.  I’m often surprised when someone pushes one of my buttons when I’d forgotten the button ever existed.

For instance, a few months ago, a guy I was doing business with dismissed my concerns saying “I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”  Almost immediately my face got hot and I began breathing harder.  The phrase brought back a very bad encounter from the past and caught me completely off guard.  The feeling was so intense, I had to leave.  

Something similar happened while I was watching the presidential debate on Tuesday.  It was subtle – or it would have been if the director hadn’t made an almost prescient decision to change cameras.

It’s no secret to anyone that I’m no fan of Mitt Romney.  I can’t fathom how half the country thinks he would be anything but a disaster as president.  But in spite of his peculiarities and past incidents like the gang assault he led on a femmy prep school classmate, I didn’t think he was necessarily a bad guy.

Then came Tuesday.

Romney’s crazy alpha-dogging was bad enough.  The questions repeated over and over again, the interruptions, the dismissiveness were all annoying.  Not a surprise after the way he steamrolled through the first debate in Denver, but irritating nevertheless.  By gosh, he was going to control that room.

For me, “the moment” came during Romney’s harangue about whether the President had called the attack on the consulate in Benghazi an act of terror.  In a long camera shot he said to the President, “You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror?”  At that moment, the director cut to a close-up so we would have a perfect view of Romney’s next expression – the raised eyebrows and tilted head that said, “I’m leading you down a path so I can rip your intestines out.”

I’ve seen that look before.  It’s been attempted on me before and I could Immediately imagine Romney using it on any number of “subordinates” – on one of his sons when he misbehaved, or on an associate who hadn’t brought quite as many billions to the Bain coffers as was expected, or on a house servant who’d done a sub-standard job of cleaning the Waterford.  That one gesture summed up all the negative impressions I’ve ever had about the man:  the sense of entitlement, the 47% speech, the unwillingness to answer to the public.  And he was doing it to the President of the United States!

Happily, by the time the exchange was over, Romney had torpedoed himself (with a little help from Candy Crowley).  But the impression remains.  Romney is a bad guy, a pompous guy, a guy with bad ideas and only one drive – to be the top dog.

I cannot believe this race is so close.