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Imagine Jesse Jackson, Jesse Helms, and Jesse Ventura each writing a history of the Clinton Presidency. All three texts will be histories. But which one is "right" would be pretty much a matter of subjective political perception. Some reviewers will judge the books entirely on the basis of their own prejudices, of course disguising their bias under the illusion of objectivity. Liberals will hail the Jackson history as "inspired," "insightful," and "eloquent" while condemning the Helms history for its narrow ethnocentricity. Conservatives will praise the Helms history for its "penetrating analysis" and "constructive moral perspective" while condemning the Jackson history for being unscholarly and unobjective. Playboy will run excerpts of the Ventura history. All the reviewers will find objective reasons for their subjective opinions, and it is on these that disinterested readers (if there are any) will have to make their own judgments. Thus, each reviewer will try to find fault with the logic, with the evidence, and with the perspective of the text while searching out reasons for praising the text the reviewer is biased toward. As Melville showed us, we see ourselves in the text. A recent scholarly biographer of Ronald Reagan wrote himself into the biography even though he wasn’t born at the time the events described actually happened. In doing so, he may have been more honest than those biographers who actually think they are being objective. As that cynic Pontius Pilate so succinctly put it, "What is truth?" We call this scholarship.

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