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Yes, it’s counterintuitive. When we think of the qualities we want in a leader, raving madness is not at the top of most people’s list, but that is a superficial view. What you truly need in a leader is not what you’d look for in a BFF or HR consultant, but someone to keep our houses unburned-down and our families unslain.
The ultimate modern practitioner of realpolitik, Richard Nixon, laid out what he called the madman theory of statecraft. Speaking about his negotiations with his enemy of the moment, he told his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, “I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry — and he has his hand on the nuclear button’ and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”
It’s as though he were talking about Joffrey way back when.
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