Trump’s Big Lie Was Plucked from Countless Small Ones
History News Network, Mar 26, 2023: When H. R. “Bob” Haldeman first described Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” in his 1978 memoir, The Ends of Power, few scholars paid serious attention. For those who did notice, the one-paragraph description of Nixon’s risk-laden strategy sounded like Haldeman was taking a cheap shot, calling his old boss crazy. After all, Nixon had seen his chief of staff resign and serve time for the Watergate cover-up. The “madman theory,” Haldeman wrote, was a “phrase…which I’m sure will bring smiles of delight to Nixon-haters everywhere.” Nearly half a century later, scholars have established that the rash ruse was central to Nixon’s strategy to fight the Cold War. The madman theory can also tell us a good deal about the famously elusive ex-president himself: how Nixon saw his career as he saw the superpower struggle, how life, for Nixon, proved to be laden with exhilarating risk, peril and a series of tests of will against determined foes…