Checking the Rove-Bush Mao biography reference, (the article is here), there is also this passage about then President Bush’s reading:
The nonfiction ran from biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Babe Ruth, King Leopold, William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long, LBJ and Genghis Khan. I think it safe to say that there is no underlying political message involved in this highly eclectic list. It does, however, bespeak of a wide interest in history.

It is a world away from “the two people I turn to most”.