Good Heavens!
An astrologer dictating the President's schedule? So says former White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan in an explosive book.
By Barrett Seaman cover
(TIME, May 16, 1988) -- In his memoir, For the Record, former White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan wastes no time before dropping his biggest bombshell. "Because actions that would otherwise bewilder the reader cannot be understood in its absence," writes Regan in a foreword, "I have revealed in this book what was probably the most closely guarded domestic secret of the Reagan White House."
The secret: First Lady Nancy Reagan's reliance on a San Francisco astrologer to determine the timing of the President's every public move. This was more than a charming eccentricity shared with the 50 million or so other Americans who, casually or in dead earnest, look to the alignment of the stars for guidance. As White House chief of staff for two years, before he was forced to resign in February 1987, Regan was in a position to see how the First Lady's faith in the astrologer's pronouncements wreaked havoc with her husband's schedule. At times, he writes, the most powerful man on earth was a virtual prisoner in the White House.
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Ronald Reagan insisted last week that at no time did astrology determine policy. Strictly speaking, that appears to be so. But Regan and others make a compelling case that in 1986 and 1987 astrological influence dramatically reduced the presidency's effectiveness, at least partly, by keeping Ronald Reagan under wraps for much of the time. Nancy's intrusions in the scheduling process, Regan said in an interview with TIME last week, "began to interfere with the normal conduct of the presidency."
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/05/19/back.time/
