The neocon apporoach to all human interaction

They believed cooperation and compromise signaled weakness . . . they viewed every encounter outside the innermost core of most trusted advisers as a zero-sum game that if they didn't win they would necessarily lose.

And in "power as the absence of constraint," as Jack Goldsmith, former head of the Office of Legal Counsel from October 2003 to July of 2004, writes in The Terror Presidency. Excerpted this week and next in Slate.

Psychologists are going to have years of fun analyzing this administration.