Okay, it's folk psychology, not hard science -- "psychopath" is a pretty vague diagnosis. It generally refers to a person who lacks empathy and displays cruelty to others. Such people often behave in a lawless and cruel manner because they simply don't feel anything wrong with doing so. Given that it's not a precise term, I'm not going to require that a psychopath be someone who necessarily disregards law or the rules of society (to quote Wiki on it). Rather, a psychopath will either regard or disregard such rules to the extent that he sees it in his own best interest. After all, even a psychopath doesn't want to get caught and do time.
It has been suggested that CEOs are themselves often psychopaths. You can take obvious cases, like "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap, but it is probably a lot more common. Right-wing business magazine Forbes even ran an article Why (Some) Psychopaths Make Great CEOs. It quotes Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test.
There are absolutes in psychopathy and the main absolute is a literal absence of empathy. It’s just not there. In higher-scoring psychopaths, what grows in the vacant field where that empathy should be is a joy in manipulating people, a lack of remorse, a lack of guilt. If you’ve got a little bit of empathy, you’re kind of not a psychopath.
And what kind of CEO does a psychopath make?
Basically, high-scoring psychopaths can be brilliant bosses but only ever for short term. Just like Al Dunlap, they always want to make a killing and move on.
Now if you were looking to find a business that existed almost purely to make a killing and move on, harm people along the way, and show absolutely no remorse in so doing, what kind of business would be ideal for you? I vote for leveraged buyout artist. (Nowadays they often prefer the more sanitized term "private equity." Same thing.) You know, a company like Bain Capital.
Now what does a corporation exist to do? Its job is to make money for its shareholders. No more, no less. In fact, if a publicly traded corporation acts in a manner that is beneficial to its employees or society but fails to maximize its shareholders' value in the process, then it may technically be in violation of its fiduciary duty to its shareholders, and can thus be sued for doing good. ("Shareholder activists" may do that.) Corporations do of course do charitable work, but it's generally justified by its publicity value and community relations value. But it's a fine balance.
That's why laws have to be so strict on corporate behavior. Even if non-psychopath CEOs want to behave ethically, they are forbidden from doing so unless the law requires it. Hence the various bits of deregulation and corporate law "reform" of the post-Reagan era must inevitably lead to unethical behavior, as ethics are no longer demanded by law.
Corporations, then, may not show remorse or empathy. It's not part of the rules. They exist to make money, and if that means polluting the environment, ruining peoples' lives, or harming more ethical competitors, then so be it. Corporations are artificial "people" created by law, and their behavior is dictated by law. If we let psychopaths write the law, we get psychopathic behavior. Corporations are legal psychopaths, potential monsters demanding regulation to tame them. By design.
And that's why I wonder if Willard Mitt himself is a psychopath. He was a natural at Bain Capital, where success stemmed from an absolute lack of empathy to the people he had to run over along the way. Sure, he is a religious man, but that certainly doesn't require empathy! Organized religion, especially the socially-conservative kind like Mormonism, provides a strict set of rules that can be memorized and followed. It doesn't require one to think about the Golden Rule and how to apply it. If the Prophet says that something is bad, then it's bad, and it is in your best interest, as a psychopath, to simply go along with that. It takes no empathy. Like a corporation, you need strict guidance to stay on the straight and narrow. (In contrast, I would be quite afraid of a psychopath who tried to be, say, a Unitarian or Ethical Culturist. He'd entirely miss the point.)
Romney's campaign gaffes, after all, tend to boil down to a common theme, that of having no empathy for the 99%. He doesn't get it when he insults peoples' clothes or food. He doesn't get it when he tells the crowd that the team owners are his friends. He doesn't get it about when he attacked a "homo" as a teen. He doesn't get it when he enjoys firing people. Al of these cases show a lack of empathy.
Contrast him with, say, Bill Clinton, whose motto was "I feel your pain". Even if he may have sometimes been a bit insincere (hey, he's a politician), he knew what people cared about. He almost certainly did feel the pain of others. That is what made him such a good instinctive politician. President Obama also shows empathy; indeed, his opponents use it as an attack. They think he's a "wuss", a "metrosexual" (talk about dog whistle). He's not "strong". Never mind the record -- to a bully, strong is a lack of empathy, not the ability to actually win. Bullies, after all, often lose when confronted.
Rmoney has rehearsed the part of candidate over and over. He is coached. He has packaged lines that people tell him will win the support of voters. But he cannot answer questions extemperaneously. He doesn't hold press conferences. He avoids questions like the plague. And he should -- he lacks the ability to empathize with voters, so his answers, while calculated, tend to miss the mark, because human emotion is hard to calculate. You need to connect.
This fall, America faces a real choice. History, however, does not bode well for nations that have been led by psychopaths.
(Note: I updated the title to point out the parallel between Mitt's behavior and that of corporations.)