Every once in awhile, a political figure gets caught speaking truth to power — that is, they suddenly drop the campaign act in front a microphone from which someone has forgotten to cut the electricity.

Think George W. Bush calling Times reporter Adam Clymer a “major-league asshole.”

And coming from a guy who’d owned a ball team, that really meant something.

Think Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, earlier this cycle, caught conferring on the need to exclude second-tier candidates from the debates.

But those snafus were the stuff of seconds, tiny whisps of reality drowned in a sea of spin. Neither lasted even a full minute.

Which brings us to Mitt Romney. A few days ago, Romney did an Iowa morning-show interview with a host named Jan Mickelson. Mickelson is straight from talk-radio Central Casting: advocates simply ignoring the Supreme Court when their rulings aren’t to his liking, aggressively pro-Life, pushy, always seeking to increase his own Conservative cred at the expense of his guest.

And during the course of the interview, Mickelson not only asks Romney about his abrupt shifts on abortion policy, and not only about his Mormonism, but about how the two dovetail — or fail to dovetail, rather.

All of this has the effect of steaming Romney’s collar. And the beauty of this video is that just as Mitt is reaching full boil, Mickelson takes a station break, and goes off the radio waves. At which point, he and Romney really mix it up.

While the station camera is still running.