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.