So What's One More Sociopath in the Whitehouse?

We're becoming a nation of sociopaths, why bother ourselves with having one at the top of the chain?  Certainly it's not the first time lately.  And as for bullies, well George W wore that like an honorific.

Charles Pierce has a confession to make about his own bullying youth and an observation to make about Mitt Romney's.

[It] takes one to know one, as the schoolyard saying goes, and so my first reaction was that the so-called "presumptive Republican candidate for president" is lying — either to us or to himself. He remembers. Of course he remembers. He has to remember, because no one forgets doing something like that, and the ones who do forget....

[...]

Which is what led me to my second reaction: What if Mitt Romney is telling the truth? What if he doesn't remember because he thought nothing of it? The language of his statement suggests that he's copping to being a prankster but not a bully — that he's not denying the past but simply saying that the past is a matter of interpretation. But it's not, and as man who has spent the better part of his life silently pleading guilty to the kinds of crimes of which Mitt Romney stands accused, I can only wonder what kind of person I'd be if I tried to beat the rap of conscience on a technicality. I can only wonder what kind of person I'd be if instead of confronting the past I tried to forget it or, worse, tried to say it wasn't really that bad. I can only wonder what kind of person I'd be if the stone of cruelty in my heart was subject not to the slow trickle of conscience but rather to my sense of ambition and entitlement — to those jewelers of the self who, beholding the stone, declared it a gem, precious and hard, of inestimable worth in the bazaars of business and politics, and set it for my presidential ring.

And here’s the thing: I thank God I don't know. Long ago, I made an innocent kid suffer; one of the great gifts of my life is that I suffered in return. Mitt Romney doesn't appear to have suffered at all for the suffering he inflicted; but as one lucky enough to have broken the mean bone in my body and to have worn it in a sling, I can tell him that what he's accused of doing to the boy whose hair and existence was such an affront to him was not a prank; it was a punishment.

  Charles Pierce