Sociopath alert: Wendy Davis

Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis has been in the news recently for having stretched the truth about her past.

Her campaign website says, "Mine is a story about a teenage single mother who struggled to keep her young family afloat. It's a story about a young woman who was given a precious opportunity to work her way up in the world. It's a story about resiliency, and sacrifice, and perseverance. And you're damn right it's a true story."

(If I hadn't heard anything about this story, that last sentence would still have given me pause: why add that it's a true story? Nobody had accused her of lying when she wrote that. The lady doth protest too loudly.)

Davis claimed to have been a divorced single mother living in a trailer at age 19 who put herself through Texas Christian University and Harvard Law School.

The truth was a bit more complicated. She was 21, not 19, when she got divorced. And she lived in a family mobile home for only a few months before moving into an apartment with her daughter.

So far, these seem like fairly benign misrepresentations. Perhaps she was separated, if not divorced, at age 19; and she did live in a trailer, if only briefly.

But, according to Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News:

A single mother working two jobs, she met Jeff Davis, a lawyer 13 years older than her, married him and had a second daughter. He paid for her last two years at Texas Christian University and her time at Harvard Law School, and kept their two daughters while she was in Boston. When they divorced in 2005, he was granted parental custody, and the girls stayed with him. Wendy Davis was directed to pay child support.

Davis got a man to support her. So, from age 24 on, it was no longer quite the story of "resiliency, sacrifice, and perseverance" that she had painted. And she certainly didn't "put herself" through Harvard Law School.

But even there, the misrepresentations seem more like exaggerations than lies made out of whole cloth. After all, she did have to support herself from age 19 to 24. So far, the "scandal" seems a bit overblown.

But lying -- or at least stretching the truth -- about one's past always emits a faint odor of sociopathy, and a closer look at Davis' life leaves little doubt about her character.

First, her explanation for the misrepresentations came across as more devious than her original fibs: "My language should be tighter. I'm learning about using broader, looser language. I need to be more focused on the detail." This is the kind of lawyerly, Clintonian evasion which is meant to imply that her faulty statement was a matter of semantics, with no dishonesty involved. (It is a peculiarly sociopathic trait to not admit guilt even when one has been caught red-handed.)

Her second husband, Jeff Davis, liquidated his 401k in order to finance her education, then eventually took out loans as well.

According to Slater:

Jeff Davis said that [their separation] was right around the time the final payment on their Harvard Law School loan was due. “It was ironic,” he said. “I made the last payment, and it was the next day she left.”

This would indicate that her primary interest in him was financial. Gold diggers tend to be at the very least narcissistic, if not outright sociopaths. And leaving the day after he finished paying off her loans speaks of a coldness that goes beyond mere narcissism.

Wendy Davis did not even try to get custody of her children:

According to Jeff Davis, “She said, ‘I think you’re right; you’ll make a good, nurturing father. While I’ve been a good mother, it’s not a good time for me right now.’”

Note how she said she was a good mother -- as if she can be a fair judge of herself on that score. She undoubtedly kept her children fed and clothed and bathed. But did she give them the greatest gift a mother can give her children -- love? No, not if she could give them up so easily. If you really love your children, it's always a good time to be with them.

(Merely entering politics, just like being a Hollywood producer or being a corporate CEO, seems almost a yellow flag for sociopathy these days. Having these occupations obviously does not mean you're a sociopath; but you're far more likely to be.)

Davis didn't even enter politics with a clearcut political vision. She started out as a Republican, then switched parties. This implies that her career was driven less by political feeling and more by personal ambition. (There's nothing wrong with being ambitious, but cloaking that ambition with a patina of platitudes about how you're doing it for "the people," or other noble reasons, is exactly the kind of thing that sociopaths do.)

While researching this post, I stumbled across a video of Davis in which she said, "I love this state," referring to Texas. What exactly does Davis mean when she says that? Does she love the actual territory that is in Texas until she comes to the Oklahoma border and then all of a sudden the ground there holds less appeal to her? Does she love all Texans? People who aren't sociopaths know that you can only truly love a few people in your life. But sociopaths don't truly love anybody. So they tend to throw the word around promiscuously, as in, "I love you all!" or, "I love this state." It's a ridiculous concept, but Davis stated with full-throated conviction, as if she really, with all her heart, loves…a state.

Sociopaths often give themselves away with that kind of false emotionality.

Here's a picture of Davis when she was at Harvard Law School:

And here's a more recent picture of her:

(Her political opponents now call her "Abortion Barbie.") I couldn't find a picture of her torso when she was young, but large, immune-to-gravity breasts sprouting out from the bony chest of a 50-year-old woman usually mean implants. And her face is barely recognizable.

Again, plenty of non-sociopaths get plastic surgery; but a sociopath is far more likely to get it.

I was also struck by this picture of Davis:

As I've pointed out elsewhere on the blog, sociopathic inmates looking for penpals often pose with animals in an attempt to look warm and affectionate. (Here's another such murderous poseur, at the bottom of this post.) But when someone's on Death Row for murder, posing this way is obviously just an attempt to mislead. I couldn't help but be reminded of those pictures when I saw this photo. (Here's a picture of another sociopathic politician posing the same way.) Maybe Davis really did feel an overwhelming amount of affection for this dog; but given her attitude toward her own children, that seems doubtful.

To pose this way with a dog is really a form of manipulation, to pull at the heartstrings of true dog-lovers. Note that her smile is directed not at the pet, but at the camera.

Davis initially gained a modicum of national attention for her eight hour filibuster against any restrictions on late term abortions in the state legislature. Filibusters have been around since the time of Roman Senator Cato the Younger. And in the past, they have been an effective diversionary legislative tactic. But the opportunity to filibuster also seems to attract those who want attention, and who want to appear heroic.

It can attract those who don't otherwise seem sociopathic, like Rand Paul. Or it can attract those who do, like Ted Cruz or Wendy Davis.

Verdict: between the fact that she exaggerated her background, never really owned up to those misrepresentations even when caught, left her husband the day after he finished paying off the loans he took our for her education, didn't want even partial custody of her own daughters, and displays false emotions, it's pretty clear Davis is a sociopath.