Genuine question, has this ever happened before?
Reagan Administration; Chief of Staff Regan....vs Nancy Reagan....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Reagan
“127]
Influence in the White House Edit
"The Gaze": Reagan watches as her husband is sworn in for a second term by Chief Justice Warren Burger, on January 20, 1985.
Donald Regan's 1988 memoir, For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington, exposes his disagreements with Reagan, for the first time revealing publicly that she had a personal astrologer (then-yet-unnamed Joan Quigley), with whom she consulted and who helped steer the President's decisions. Regan wrote:
Virtually every major move and decision the Reagans made during my time as White House Chief of Staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco [Quigley] who drew up horoscopes to make certain that the planets were in a favorable alignment for the enterprise.[128][129]
Nancy Reagan stated in her memoirs, "I felt panicky every time [Ronald Reagan] left the White House"[130] following the assassination attempt, and made it her concern to know her husband's schedule: the events he would be attending, and with whom.[13] Eventually, this protectiveness led to her consulting an astrologer, Joan Quigley, who offered insight on which days were "good", "neutral", or should be avoided, which influenced her husband's White House schedule.[131] Days were color-coded according to the astrologer's advice to discern precisely which days and times would be optimal for the president's safety and success.[13]
The White House Chief of Staff, Donald Regan, grew frustrated with this regimen, which created friction between him and the First Lady. This escalated with the revelation of the Iran–Contra affair, an administration scandal, in which the First Lady felt Regan was damaging the president.[132] She thought he should resign, and expressed this to her husband, although he did not share her view. Regan wanted President Reagan to address the Iran-Contra matter in early 1987 by means of a press conference, though Reagan refused to allow her husband to overexert himself due to a recent prostate surgery and astrological warnings.[133] Regan became so angry with Reagan that he hung up on her during a 1987 telephone conversation. According to the recollections of ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson, when the President heard of this treatment, he demanded—and eventually received—Regan's resignation.[134] Vice President George H. W. Bush is also reported to have suggested to Reagan to have Regan fired.[135] In his 1988 memoirs, Regan wrote about Reagan's consultations with the astrologer, the first public mention of them, which resulted in embarrassment for the First Lady.[136] Reagan later wrote, "Astrology was simply one of the ways I coped with the fear I felt after my husband almost died... Was astrology one of the reasons [further attempts did not occur]? I don't really believe it was, but I don't really believe it wasn't."[137]
Ronald and Nancy Reagan together in the Oval Office, 1985
Nancy wielded a powerful influence over President Reagan.[138] Again stemming from the assassination attempt, she strictly controlled access to the president and even occasionally attempted to influence her husband's decision making.[138][139]
Beginning in 1985, she strongly encouraged her husband to hold "summit" conferences with Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, and suggested they form a personal relationship beforehand.[13] Both Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev had developed a productive relationship through their summit negotiations. The relationship between Nancy Reagan and Raisa Gorbacheva was anything but the friendly, diplomatic one between their husbands; Reagan found Gorbacheva hard to converse with and their relationship was described as "frosty".[140] The two women usually had tea and discussed differences between the USSR and the United States. Visiting the United States for the first time in 1987, Gorbacheva irked Reagan with lectures on subjects ranging from architecture to socialism, reportedly prompting the American president's wife to quip, "Who does that dame think she is?"[141]”