I am not sure if this focus on the personal psychology of individual actors within corporate or governmental bureaucracies is more pronounced in the U.S., but that might explain a lot about U.S. politics: For cultural reasons, Americans are less capable of analyzing or even comprehending institutions and social systems. Instead, they only see the trees -- not the forest. Perhaps Americans are more prone to thoughts like "yeah, I feel like I'm getting screwed over at work, but my boss is such a nice guy... it must be X (immigrants, homos, etc.)." The notion of systemic or structural oppression just seems incomprehensible by the majority of the American public.
Hey, it's a hypothesis.
[WS:] It seems like a good hypothesis to me. I would qualify it a bit and say that US-ers are generally incapable of comprehending institutional and social systems, let alone forming them, but there are exceptions. Those few US-ers who can overcome the knee-jerk individualism of the US collective psyche do extremely well in term of gaining wealth and power, because they face little organized opposition from the rest of the populace.
One possible explanation of it can be found in DeTocqueville's analysis of the US populism, especially in the concepts of soft despotism and tyranny of the majority. The argument is that rabid pursuit of self-interest and anti-institutionalism lead to the abandonment of the "public sphere" by the populace, which in turn creates an opportunity for tyrants and demagogues to take over.
Wojtek