"Roosevelt was certainly an ambitious President, who disliked the obstruction of his policies. He devoted most of his energy to short-term political tactics, and was never choosy about the allies he found. He was obsessed with public opinion and his own popularity. He was an unsophisticated idealist, who once confessed that his political outlook could be summed up in two words: Democrat and Christian. Though the idealism was genuine enough, friends and colleagues found his views on most issues ill-defined and pragmatic. Roosevelt's instinct for political survival created in him a distrust of ideological conviction. Charles Bohlen, who interpreted for him at Teheran, thought the President 'preferred to work by improvisation than by plan'. He disliked putting anything down on paper, and instead did much of his work in informal conversations, throwing round ideas, exploring options, testing the water. He could be disarming, flattering, cheerful, supportive, but was, by general agreement of those around him, difficult to pin down. 'Not a tidy mind,' wrote an otherwise sympathetic British observer."