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Being crazy gets you leverage on the negotiation table. Seeming measured and rational and restrained oftentimes gets you into trouble. See Jimmy Carter and the Iran hostage crisis, for instance. There's no way that'd happen under a more aggressive President, like FDR or Nixon or GW. [citation needed]

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See: Kim Jong-Il

I was thinking more in these terms:

... the entire "madman theory" of coercion was flawed in its essence, depending as it did on twisted logic that assumed an adversary would respond to a calculated show of irrationality with something other than irrationality of its own. [1]

[1] http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0614-20.htm

In that article you can see what kind of danger unchecked assumptions and arrogance can lead people into, specially when these traits are carried by people with access to WMD.

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