Earle Hudd is a composite character based on a number of Bush's evangelical minister friends, among them, James Robison.

According to Stephen Mansfield's book, The Faith of George W. Bush, W calls his friend, the Charismatic preacher James Robison, host of the TV show Life Today, and tells him, “I've heard the call. I believe God wants me to run for president.”

Bush said, “I can’t explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen, and, at that time, my country is going to need me. I know it won’t be easy, on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.” (See "The Faith of George W. Bush," by Stephen Mansfield, pages 108-109)

Also -- Robison suggests that when Bush decided to run for president he may have anticipated the great challenges America would soon face. Robison tells FRONTLINE that Bush told him: “I feel that I'm supposed to run for president. I don't wanna do that. I didn't wanna be governor. But I believe I'm supposed to. I can't explain it, but I believe my country's gonna need me.” (http://www.pbs.org/previews/frontline_choice2004/)

Mark Craig, Bush's minister at the First United Methodist Church in Austin, preached about Moses when Bush and his family were in church -- "He told the story of Moses, asked by God to lead his people to a land of milk and honey...'Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the sons of Egypt?' Moses asks in the third chapter of Exodus. The people won't believe me, he protested. I'm not a very good speaker. 'Oh, my Lord, send, I pray some other person. But God did not and ultimately Moses did his bidding, leading his people through forty years of wilderness and wandering, relying on God for strength and direction and inspiration..."

"He was talking to you," my mother later said.

("A Charge to Keep," Bush, pages 8-9)

According to Professor Bruce Lincoln, who teaches a seminar on the theology of George W. Bush at the University of Chicago Divinity School, the president "does feel that people are called upon by the Divine to undertake certain positions in the world, and undertake certain actions, and to be responsible for certain things. And he makes, I think, quite clear—explicitly in some contexts, and implicitly in a great many others—that he occupies the office by a Divine calling. That God put him there with a sense of purpose."

(http://www.villagevoice.com/2004-04-27/news/the-divine-calm-of-george-w-bush/1)