draw for his thinking," elaborating that "A man couldn't wear a mustache like that without having it affect his mind." Aloofness Dewey had a tendency towards pomposity and was considered stiff and unapproachable in public, with his aide Ruth McCormick Simms once describing him as "cold, cold as a February iceberg". She added that "he was brilliant and thoroughly honest." During his governorship, one writer observed: "A blunt fact about Mr. Dewey should be faced: it is that many people do not like him. He is, unfortunately, one of the least seductive personalities in public life. That he has made an excellent record as governor is indisputable. Even so, people resent what they call his vindictiveness, the 'metallic' nature of his efficiency, his cockiness (which actually conceals a nature basically shy), and his suspiciousness. People say... that he is as devoid of charm as a rivet or a lump of stone." However, Dewey's friends considered him a warm and friendly companion. Journalist Irwin Ross noted that, "more than most politicians, [Dewey] displayed an enormous gap between his private and his public manner. To friends and colleagues he was warm and gracious, considerate of others' views… He could tell a joke and was not dismayed by an off-color story. In public, however, he tended to freeze up, either out of diffidence or too stern a sense of the dignity of office. The smiles would seem forced… the glad-handing gesture awkward." A magazine writer described the difference between Dewey's private and public behavior by noting that, "Till he gets to the door, he may be cracking jokes and laughing like a schoolboy. But the moment he enters a room he ceases to be Tom Dewey and becomes what he thinks the Governor of New York ought to be." Leo W. O'Brien, a reporter for United Press International (UPI) who was later elected to Congress as a Democrat, recalled Dewey in an interview by saying that "I hated his guts when he first came to Albany, and I loved him by the time he left. It was almost tragic – how he put on a pose that alienated people. Behind a pretty thin veneer he was a wonderful guy." John Gunther wrote in 1947 that many supporters were fiercely loyal to Dewey. Opportunism and vagueness Dewey's presidential campaigns were hampered by Dewey's habit of not being "prematurely specific" on controversial issues. President Truman