Since I have a tremendous respect for my dad and his political opinions (even the ones I don’t agree with), I wrestled with this for a while. It floored me, then, when at some point during the Obama presidency my dad referred to President Bush as “one of my heroes”. Bush has been much maligned since his re-election in 2004, and even I, as a conservative Christian, began to think just as badly of him as a lot of his critics. If he is a trustworthy historian (which I believe he is, and he is inarguably more trustworthy than Caesar), he will give us terrific insights that no one else can. Bush at the same time the best possible source and the worst possible source for a history of the events of his presidency. We have to deal with it and work it into a larger historical perspective. However, Julius Caesar is the best source we have on the Gallic Wars. Bush’s book to build our historical framework for the same reason we cannot rely on Julius Caesar to give us an unbiased perspective on the Gallic Wars. Obviously, from a historical perspective, we cannot completely rely on George W. Yet that is what happened all throughout Decision Points. It is confounding on its face, then, that one book written by one person, whose perspective is inarguably affected by personal experience, made me think so much about history. It is a discipline that requires input from multiple perspectives, sources, and time periods in order to be engaged in responsibly.
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