It does seem that way, doesn't it? We read about the people who clearly couldn't stand him, we read about the plots that were hatched, we read about all of the conspirators...

So why didn't Julius Caesar, a career politician if there ever was one, not delightfully butcher his enemies a la Marius or Sulla (The previous two men who had managed to seize absolute-ish control of Rome)? Why didn't he see all of these things that are in front of our noses?

The easy answer is perspective. As people who are looking into the past from the perspective of the present, we get a nice, consolidated, top-down view that gives us a beautiful picture of the political intricacies of the Roman world (to some extent). We have a picture of the uneasy mood of the Senate with their new self-appointed dictator. The only thing missing in that picture is a perspective shot: What would Caesar himself have seen from his position?

Caesar was as much a product of his time as anyone else. He was born in 100 BCE (the perfect point for constructing a nice lattice of the last century! You just have to base everything around Caesar's birth), and he lived throughout the chaotic violence and civil war offered throughout that century. He watched the Roman Empire torn apart in the Social War when he was 8-10, he watched Marius' bloody, murderous reign when he was about 13-14, and he watched Sulla's gory return to the city immediately following that. He was privy to the brutality to which his fellow Romans could and would subject one another, and he saw exactly how much turmoil that caused - turmoil that was certainly not good for anyone striving for power and glory, and someone who wanted to be seen as a model of Roman virtue.

Caesar, before his war with Pompey, was assigned to be the proconsul, or governor, of Gaul (To the Romans when he started, this just meant the strip of land connecting Italy to Spain along the coast of the Mediterranean, northern Italy, and the Alpine area). He promptly stretched the legality of this mandate by making some excuses to invade and conquer the area we now know as France. Over the course of the next 9ish years, he used both his political savvy and the strength of his army to divide, conquer, and unite the land under Roman rule. Those 9 years taught him a huge number of lessons, which he promptly put to use in Rome.

After Caesar defeated Pompey, the Romans expected harsh retribution, which would have invited more civil war, civil war which would, at this point, potentially completely unravel the Empire. Some insight into the situation can be gleaned from reading Cicero's letters - for example, this tidbit when he was anxiously awaiting news from Brundisium (during Caesar's Civil War):

What, then, is to be done, if the one course is criminal, the other exposed to punishment? "You will obtain permission," say you, "from Caesar to absent yourself and live in retirement." Am I to implore this permission, then? How humiliating! What if I fail to get it? Again, you say, "The question of your triumph will be unprejudiced." What if this very thing is used to put pressure upon me? Should I accept it? What a disgrace! Should I decline it? Caesar will think that I am repudiating his whole policy, as formerly in the case of the land commission.

Why, in excusing himself, he always throws the whole blame for what then happened on me, saying that I was so bitterly opposed to him, that I would not accept even an honour at his hands. With how much greater irritation will he take a similar proceeding from me now? It will, of course, be greater in proportion as this honour is greater than the former, and he is himself in a stronger position.

And then later, continuing to discuss the delicacy of the situation...

As to your advice to ask him to allow me to shew the same consideration for Pompey, as I have shewn to himself—that you will see from the letters of Balbus and Oppius, of which I sent you copies, I have been doing all the time. I send you also Caesar's letter to them, written in quite a sane frame of mind, considering the insanity of the whole business. If, on the other hand, Caesar will not make this concession to me, I see your opinion is that my rule should be that of the peacemaker. In this it is not the danger that I fear—for with so many hanging over my head, why not settle the matter by choosing the most honourable ?-but what I do fear is embarrassing Pompey; and that he should turn upon me The monster Gorgon's petrifying glare. For our friend Pompey has set his heart to a surprising degree on imitating Sulla's reign.

I am not speaking without book, I assure you. He never made less of a secret of anything. "With such a man," you will say, "do you wish to be associated?" I follow personal obligation, not the cause: as I did in the case of Milo, and in—but there is no need to go into that. "Is not the cause, then, a good one?" Nay, the best: but it will be conducted, remember, in the most criminal way. The first plan is to choke off the city and Italy by starving them; the next, to devastate the country with sword and fire, and not to keep their hands off the money of the wealthy. But seeing that I fear the same from Caesar's side, without any good to be got on Pompey's, I think my better course is to stay at home, and there await whatever comes. Yet I hold myself to be under so great an obligation to him, that I do not venture to incur the charge of ingratitude. However, you have yourself fully stated what is to he said in defence of that course.

Then later, after Caesar's victory over Pompey, his letters turn somewhat desperate:

You must exert yourself to the utmost by means of those who are favourably disposed to me and are influential with Caesar, especially by means of Balbus and Oppius, to induce them to write on my behalf as zealously as possible. For I am being attacked, as I hear, both by certain persons who are with him and by letter. We must counteract them as vigorously as the importance of the matter demands. Fufius is there, a very bitter enemy of mine. Quintus has sent his son not only to plead on his own behalf, but also to accuse me. He gives out that he is being assailed by me before Caesar, though Caesar himself and all his friends refute this. Indeed he never stops, wherever he is, heaping every kind of abuse upon me. Nothing has ever happened to me so much surpassing my worst expectations, nothing in these troubles that has given me so much pain. People who say that they heard them from his own lips, when he was publicly talking at Sicyon in the hearing of numerous persons, have reported some abominable things to me. You know his style, perhaps have even had personal experience of it: well, it is all now turned upon me.

Here, he's clearly prepping for the worst:

But about myself I have no doubt Caesar has written to Balbus and to Oppius, by whom, if they had had anything pleasant to report, I should have been informed, and they would have spoken to you. Pray have some talk with them on this point, and write me word of their answer not that any security granted by Caesar is likely to have any certainty, still one will be able to consider things and make some provision for the future. Though I shun the sight of all, especially with such a son-in-law as mine, yet in such a state of misery I can't think of anything else to wish.

In further letters, he struggles with matters concerning a property to which he was entitled as a part of a will, as his co-heirs clearly figured he would be executed.

So why did I just send you a Ciceronian wall of text? Well, mostly so that you could glimpse the confusion of the world in which Cicero lived - indeed, a common theme of those letters is a frustration at a lack of news, or the speed at which that news traveled. He, and others, clearly expected Caesar to be far less merciful than he was, especially considering the precedents - and that expectation, that fear, only made their dislike of the man (or tyrant, as Cicero liked to refer to him) more and more keen. Caesar himself tried to allay those worries with his policy of clemency, a practice which he believed would help to unite Rome and to restore balance and peace to the state. He was finished with his "stick" part of politics, and now was moving on to the "carrot" - or, as he'd learned in Gaul, rewarding those individuals who proved to be solid, capable, and, most of all, loyal.

Caesar clearly miscalculated a decent bit (to the stabbity extreme), but his mentality behind it wasn't all bad. He didn't have the benefit of knowing everything that Cicero wrote about him, about the plot to murder him, or that some of those he didn't consider to be an immediate threat/enemies would be leading it. Hell, he was killed at the last meeting of the Senate before he headed off to make war on Parthia, and an assassination in the middle of the Senate was absolutely unheard of.

He didn't want to be seen as a tyrant, and attempted to establish a strong, longstanding political coalition united behind him to secure the stability of the state. Whether or not his ideas were benevolent is all a matter of opinion, but he wanted to avoid the image of the bloodthirsty tyrant that had stained the reputations of his predecessors.

Hope that answers your question :)