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Nixon used visual aids to explain to the American people the importance of bombing sites in Cambodia.
Zachary Jacobson, Irwin Gellman, Carolyn Eisenberg
Episode 2474 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a discussion about whether or not President Nixon was a madman with the question being examined by professors Zachary Jonathan Jacobson, Irwin F. Gellman and Carolyn Eisenberg with Andy Pham serving as an interlocutor.
In his new book On Nixon’s Madness, Professor Zachary Jonathan Jacobson analyzes the question – Was Richard Nixon actually a madman, or did he just play one?
In this episode, a good friend of this podcast, Andy Pham will lead a discussion involving three prominent writers including Professor Jacobson, the author, Irwin F. Gellman and Carolyn Eisenberg about the book On Nixon’s Madness. The professors delve deeply into the perceived reasons for many of the actions taken by President Nixon before and during the American Vietnam War.
According to Professor Jacobson, When Richard Nixon battled for the presidency in 1968, he did so with the knowledge that, should he win, he would face the looming question of how to extract the United States from its disastrous war in Vietnam. It was on a beach that summer that Nixon disclosed to his chief aide, H. R. Haldeman, one of his most notorious, risky gambits: the madman theory.
In On Nixon’s Madness, Zachary Jonathan Jacobson examines the enigmatic president through this theory of Nixon’s own invention. With strategic force and nuclear bluffing, Nixon attempted to coerce his foreign adversaries through sheer unpredictability. As his national security advisor Henry Kissinger noted, Nixon’s strategy resembled a poker game in which he “push[ed] so many chips into the pot” that the United States’ foes would think the president had gone “crazy.”
Listen to episode 2474 and discover more about whether or not President Nixon was a madman during the Vietnam War as the question was examined by professors Zachary Jonathan Jacobson, Irwin F. Gellman and Carolyn Eisenberg with Andy Pham serving as an interlocutor.
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