You could get lost in that photo of Donald Trump and Mitt Romney, couldn’t you? Every time you look at it, another new detail rises to the surface and breaks your heart. The angle of Romney’s eyebrows. The self-satisfied lurch in Trump’s neck. The bottle of wine in the background and the glasses of water on the table. The sensation that Trump has shoved away his plate of scallops and demanded that someone bring him a big bowl of Sugar Puffs and a mixing spoon.

But it is Romney’s face that makes this such a fascinating picture. Look at it. There is no way on Earth that Romney expected the photo to be taken. He is, remember, the most presidential-looking non-president in the history of the United States. He looks like what you would get if you asked a beachside cartoonist on Martha’s Vineyard to draw a human version of a bald eagle. Yet here he is, three mouthfuls into a meal, looking sheepish and squirming as if he has just been caught in bed with another woman. If this photo had a caption, it would be: “Honey! What are you doing back so early?”

‘Nigel Farage looks like a competition winner who lost all bladder control because he got to meet an American off the telly.’ Photograph: ‏@Nigel_Farage/Twitter

We’re told that Trump is a master of distraction, that every time he tweets or barks or honks it is a carefully stage-managed ploy to keep our attention away from his hidden agenda. There will be those who claim that this photo is one such distraction. However, I cannot agree. It strikes so hard at the essence of what it is to be Romney – a failed presidential candidate so desperate for power in any form that he is willing to make a humiliatingly public display of affection towards a man he once called a fraud. And it is an aspect of Trump’s strategy that is vitally important to highlight.

Trump does this over and over again. Forget about dealmaking or galvanising the white working class; his greatest talent is his ability to make you reveal your true self in photographs. He is such an overt character, and inspires such polarised reaction, that people become totally incapable of hiding their feelings around him. This is my theory: if you’re a public figure of any description, history will remember only what you looked like when you were photographed with Trump.

Romney – sagging and broken as though Trump has ambushed him with a mariachi band playing Tonight You Belong To Me on an orchestra of sex toys – is only one example. And you don’t have to look far for others.

Chris Christie looks on as his political ambitions burn. Photograph: Scott Audette/Reuters

A year ago, for instance, Chris Christie was a genuine presidential contender: an old-school political heavyweight who, as governor of New Jersey, prided himself on his ability to push through ideas, even managing to unite the gaping political chasm between the left and the right as he did so. Close your eyes and think of him now, though. What do you see? You see a shaved bear, don’t you? You see someone slow-witted and concussed standing behind Trump like a hypnotised heavy from a 1960s episode of Batman. No matter what he does for the rest of his life, no matter how many orphanages he builds or diseases he cures, you will always remember Christie as a lumbering, clueless henchman. Why? Because someone took a photograph of him with Trump.

It works for his opponents, too. Before he met Trump, Barack Obama was the model of cool positivity. He was young and powerful, cresting on a wave of strong opinion polls. He was “yes we can”, he was “fired up, ready to go”. But that persona evaporated for ever during his first press conference with Trump. Youth abandoned him in that moment; suddenly, he looked old and tired, like Danny Glover staggering around immediately before the White House is taken out by an oceanliner halfway through the film 2012. His true self was dragged to the surface by Trump.

And then there is Nigel Farage, turned indelibly into a radioactive Mr Punch doll – albeit a radioactive Mr Punch doll with grey teeth and useless hands – because he was once in a lift with Trump and a camera. Worse still for Farage, their picture strips away any illusion that he was ever a patriotic iconoclast. Look at him. He looks like a competition winner who lost all bladder control because he got to meet an American off the telly. It must be excruciating.

Romney, Christie, Obama and Farage have all unwittingly blundered into defining images – and all because they happened to be photographed in the same room as Trump. But what is terrible for them – nobody wants a legacy like that – could be great news for the rest of the world.

‘His true self was dragged to the surface by Trump’ ... when the president-elect met the president. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Just wait until the first photocall at Trump’s inaugural G20 summit. In that moment, we’ll be given a perfect snapshot of the world. We will see exactly what truly beats in the hearts of our most powerful figures. Who is ashamed, who is sycophantic, who is angry; all will be revealed, because Trump will be right there in the middle of it, sucking their souls to the surface and, let’s not kid ourselves, probably eating a bowl of Sugar Puffs with a mixing spoon.