We don't understand our country's present and future because we don't understand the past--even the very recent past.

In trying to comprehend how the improbable world leader George W. Bush rose to the top and executed an array of radical policies, I began digging into the Bush family's history for clues. During my five years of research, I found that I had to re-examine the conventional wisdom and even my assumptions--not just about George W. Bush, but also about his father. Once I started taking a hard look at the particulars of both men's lesser-known activities over their lifetimes, I began finding that the public personas of the two men little reflected their true mindset or most enduring alliances.

There is not space here to detail the many revelations found in Family of Secrets and backed up with documents, named sources and more than a thousand footnotes. But I will begin this conversation by pointing out that the Bushes, father and son, can be best understood as promoting and defending the power and prerogatives of allied families and industries that had been accruing influence behind the scenes for generations. A turning point came when I discovered that the elder Bush, long before he was CIA Director, led a double life--behind his public roles as an oilman, politician and diplomat--working on highly sensitive covert projects with the intelligence community. This research into George H.W. Bush's clandestine activities led me to a profoundly new understanding of several seminal events in this country's history, including the JFK assassination, Watergate, and the destabilization of the Carter and Clinton administrations. Nearly as remarkable were the traces of global covert operations I found in little-known companies associated with the young George W. Bush as well.

When this nation's conversational gatekeepers speak of power elites shaping and dominating a political system, more often than not, they are referring to developing countries. There is a virtual taboo on exploring the true domestic reach of the wealthy, banking interests, the spy services, military and military contractors. Our elected leaders are routinely depicted as singular actors upon the stage of history. And we personalize everything, and get caught up in debate about what are in essence distractions--W's purported religious conversion, his troubled relationship with his father, the genius of Karl Rove and "evil nature" of Dick Cheney. We prefer to view politics as if it were a sporting competition, and discourage efforts to better understand how elites in our own society maintain their wealth, power and influence.

The two George Bushes, different as they appeared to be, both presided over administrations whose hallmark was extreme secrecy and the aggressive projection of military might to secure, among other goals, commercial opportunities for their friends and allies. This was no accident. As I make plain in Family of Secrets, the Bush policies were but the ultimate expression of a powerful if largely obscured current running through our country's history. Once we begin coming to terms with the real history of this country and the influences that shape it, we will have a better sense of the difficulties faced by Barack Obama, and the tremendous pressures upon him to continue serving those narrow interests, rather than the public good.