The Final Days 5

On page 156 of The Final Days, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein say that House Minority Leader John Rhodes “thought that the President’s aloofness showed strength.”

My tendency to be rather aloof has turned people off from me, but is there a way in which people have seen it as an asset in me rather than a liability?  Perhaps some have admired me because I did not seem to care about what other people thought.

Well, this could have happened, at times.  Of course, my problem is that I actually care too much about what other people think, and that’s why I’m nervous in social situations.  I doubt that people see me as the strong, silent type when I am nervous and timid as I talk with them, or when I appear clingy in my desperate attempts to forms contacts with people.

My understanding is that Nixon, on some level, was deliberately aloof, since he thought that this was suitable for the dignity of his office.  And yet, I have also read that he wanted to be loved, and this would be consistent with seeing him as one who wanted to have social skills so that he could receive the love that he craved, yet he tried to make due with lacking them.  But I have also read that Nixon saw socializing as a waste of time, that he thought his time was better spent reading books and learning.  So was his issue that he did not want to socialize, rather than that he wanted to but lacked the skills to do so?  Perhaps it’s a combination of all of these.