History shows us tough leaders have one thing in common: lying
Oct 13, 2015, 5:08 AM | Updated: 8:45 am
(AP Photo/Jim Cole)
We like our presidents tough. It’s a big reason Donald Trump has done so well and it’s why many Americans seem to hold a grudging respect for Vladimir Putin.
These guys project toughness. They’re decisive. They’re not afraid to use force.
What history shows, however, is that tough leaders also tend to lie about the results of their tough decisions.
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We have tapes of President Lyndon Johnson’s phone calls, so we know that in 1966, seven years before we finally left Vietnam, he knew the U.S. couldn’t win — even as he was sending more troops.
“I can’t get out. I just can’t be the architect of surrender,” he said.
No, because presidents have to stand tough, even if it means being dishonest.
Now we have new information on another tough guy: Richard Nixon. Nixon bombed North Vietnam in January of 1972 and went on television to tell the American people it was working.
“I had no other choice but to bomb selected military targets,” he said. “The results have been very, very effective,” Nixon explained.
But thanks to documents released by reporter Bob Woodward we now know that he was lying too, because of something he wrote a day after that interview. Scrawled across a report from his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, Nixon wrote that the U.S. had 10 years of “total control of the air over Laos and Vietnam, the result: zilch.”
Zilch. Three million tons of bombs. Zero results. But at least he looked tough.