Sometimes I find myself riding the NYC subway very late at night, long after all the respectable people have donned their smoking jackets and finished their last sherry of the evening (or whatever it is that respectable people do before bed these days). There, in the maniac-infused pre-dawn hours, I will sometimes find myself in a Threatening Situation.

I know how to handle these situations, when raving lunatics roam the cars looking for confrontations whilst conducting one-sided arguments with ancient childhood toys that may or may not be buried somewhere in their pockets. Sometimes the right strategy is to Mind My Own Business, head down, nose buried in a newspaper. And sometimes the best ploy is a little number I call “Crazier Than Thou.”

This is an entertaining one. Generations of schoolboys have learned it as a playground survival technique. It involves not avoiding eye contact. Rather, my goal while playing “Crazier Than Thou” is to affect a wild-eyed, unaccountably smiling demeanor that even certified lunatics recognize as Dangerously Insane. They can see in my eyes a look that tells them that I will gladly demonstrate that I can be more randomly, violently unbalanced than they could ever dream of, and that I’d enjoy every second of it. This might sound implausible, but I’m an actor and it’s always worked for me - “Crazier Than Thou,” when deployed correctly, causes sociopathic, shambling maniacs to mutter darkly and strike out for the next subway car in the hopes of finding someone who’ll show the proper respect towards a dangerous lunatic.

There’s a point here, and the point is that routines like “Crazier Than Thou” are useful only in a one-on-one, late-night confrontation. I don’t do it at dinner parties. Yes, there are crazy people at dinner parties. And yes, it might theoretically be desirable to make a certifiable and annoying dinner party guest avoid me, thinking, “I’m gonna go elswhere - that dude’s crazy. He’s capable of anything.” But being a somewhat rational man, I realize that when I am at a party there are other people in the room - friends, colleagues, people with whom I will still be in touch long after the host’s cousin’s insane husband (for example) has faded from memory. In short, it’s rarely to my advantage to make a large group of friends and colleagues believe that I am a raving lunatic, a loose cannon with no regard for generally accepted rules of conduct. It’s a little bit of a social and professional handicap when the people in your life believe that you have utterly taken leave of your senses.

You’re thinking that this is a fairly simple point, perhaps even ridiculously obvious. But it seems to be a point that the Bush administration has utterly failed to grasp.

Fans of the administration’s Iraq policy will tell you that our approach is working on Saddam. By strutting around like a semiretarded pro wrestler (”I’m crazy! I’m nuts! I’ll rip you apart! I won’t wait for a coalition! I wanna go at it RIGHT NOW! Oooh - hold me back!!!”), the logic goes, Saddam has been intimidated into allowing inspections, and thus war might possibly be avoided.

Unfortunately for us all, the international community is much more like a dinner party than it is like a deserted subway car at dawn. When the world’s only remaining superpower begins behaving like a ritalin-deprived Hulk Hogan, everyone at the party becomes understandably nervous. And if Saddam eventually makes an excuse and departs hastily, we won’t be thought of as heroes - we’ll be left with awkward silences, destabilized relationships, and a bunch of terrified and alienated ex-friends glancing at their watches and making sotto voce arrangements to get together another time, without the Crazy Guy.