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On some of the occasions when President Donald Trump seems crazy, he’s just acting that way to make foreign leaders think he’s crazy and therefore rush to placate him before he does something crazy. Or so the Wall Street Journal reports “senior officials” are saying. When an aide asked Trump why he wrote “Praise be to Allah” in a social-media post that threatened to destroy Iran, the Journal reports:

[Trump] said he wanted to seem as unstable and insulting as possible, believing it could bring the Iranians to the table. … It was a language, he said, the Iranians would understand. … “How’s it playing?” he asked advisers.

[Trump] said he wanted to seem as unstable and insulting as possible, believing it could bring the Iranians to the table. … It was a language, he said, the Iranians would understand. … “How’s it playing?” he asked advisers.

The idea comes straight out of Richard Nixon’s playbook. During his 1968 presidential campaign, Nixon explained it to his assistant, H.R. (Bob) Haldeman (who inscribed the words in his posthumously published diary):

I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I’ve reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just let 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 [where negotiations were being held] in two days begging for peace.”

I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I’ve reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just let 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 [where negotiations were being held] in two days begging for peace.”

There are three things worth noting about the Madman Theory and why it hasn’t worked yet for Trump.

First, it didn’t work for Nixon. After winning the election, he sent his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, to convey the message to the North Vietnamese—who shrugged and proceeded with their plan to take over all of Vietnam, as they believed would have happened peacefully if the United States hadn’t refused to carry out the 1954 Geneva Agreement calling for Vietnam-wide elections (which they believed Ho’s Communist Party........

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