After watching, dumbfounded, “When Mitt Romney Came to Town“—the 28 minute documentary on Mitt Romney’s shenanigans at Bain Capital (the one put out by Newt Gingrich’s wealthy friends), I think Romney’s campaign theme song should be Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” (for its nihilistic and Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest ethos).
I’d love to see Rush Limbaugh sing it, balls-to-the-wall, on Romney’s behalf.
I also think the following would make a good Romney campaign slogan (a line from William Blake’s poetry):
Roll your cart over the bones of the dead.
I can’t help but wonder, after seeing the Bain Capital documentary, whether Romney might be a very high-functioning psychopath. Wouldn’t that be alarming, to elect one of those to the highest political office in the world?
Oops!
Prometheus Unbound 
“I can’t help but wonder, after seeing the Bain Capital documentary, whether Romney might be a very high-functioning psychopath. Wouldn’t that be alarming, to elect one of those to the highest political office in the world?”
I actually knew a person over here that is now a top level politician on the national level. I can’t say high-functioning psychopath for certain, but clearly deceitful and manipulative in a way that stunned me as well as others. As a politician that person isn’t even on the radar in this respect. Which makes me suspect that most of them are on the anti-social spectrum. It makes perfect sense. A job like priest, therapist or politician would suit such a person perfectly.
I think at some level people are aware of this but choose not to think about it. Bill Clinton looked right into the camera and lied. And he is still popular. It’s almost like the Stockholm syndrome.
Paradigm,
I agree with you that most psychopaths are probably on the antisocial side of the spectrum (though I don’t know this). But Jim Jones, the notorious People’s Temple pastor, was definitely a psychopath (and had, apparently, good social skills).
Romney’s affect is flat and staged, and therefore weird. I was struck by Romney’s lack of (unstaged) emotion after he won Iowa (contrasted with Santorum, who obviously is not a psychopath and had deep emotions after getting second place). On election night, Romney had to recite lines from patriotic songs to evoke emotion in the Iowa crowd, as if Romney needed a formulaic prop to ignite emotions, but even in reciting the words he didn’t seem particularly moved by them himself. I wonder if Romney, for example, ever sincerely cries in the presence of his family, if he feels emotions at appropriate moments, etc.
I wonder what his wife would say in an honest moment. Romney is the Republican version of John Edwards (who is also probably a say-anything psychopath).
Maybe evolution has preserved psychopathy in the species because it enhances survival under certain common human circumstances (such as when you have to make a Machiavellian play for power or engage in war).
I like that Romney is not an ideologue—he seems a safer alternative to Santorum in this regard—but if Romney’s a clinical psychopath, that’s deeply problematic.
I largely evaluate Republican candidates with a central criterion: will this person, if elected, at least not start any stupid wars or do anything batshit insane. (Bush flunked these tests.) Because of the potential psychopathy, I’m starting to have some doubts about Romney.
On the other hand, if Romney (inwardly) treats politics as just a game (to see how far one can take it), then he might play it very well and prove to be a conventionally good and politically cautious president (wanting good ratings from future historians).
—Santi