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To this day, Nancy's Friend continues to influence the President's schedule. For the Reagan-Gorbachev Washington summit, she cast the charts of both men and determined that 2 p.m. on Dec. 8, 1987, was the most propitious moment for them to sign the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty. At Nancy's behest, the entire summit was built around that hour. For the upcoming Moscow summit, Gorbachev's chart (he is a Pisces) has been recast alongside Reagan's (Aquarius).
Nancy's proscriptions have not always been obeyed. On April 7, 1986, Reagan went to the Baltimore Orioles' opening-day game at Memorial Stadium despite dire warnings from the Friend that he should not travel that day. Until Reagan's safe return, the White House communications network was ablaze with Nancy's efforts to abort the trip.
Both Reagans have always been superstitious, observing such harmless rituals as knocking on wood and walking around, never under, ladders. The President puts a certain coin and a gold lucky charm in his pocket each morning, and routinely tosses salt over his left shoulder not just when he spills some but before all his meals. Ronald Reagan freely admits his superstition, but in a manner that allays concern. In his 1965 autobiography, Where's the Rest of Me?, he breezily describes his and Nancy's attention to syndicated horoscopes. And Nancy Reagan is far from the first First Lady to seek guidance from extrascientific sources. Mary Todd Lincoln attended seances trying to contact her dead son Willie, and Edith Wilson and Florence Harding consulted the same clairvoyant.
In Reagan's mind, an actor's superstitions coexist unabashedly alongside a deep, if unstructured, Christian faith. He is untroubled by the contradictions between the paranormal phenomena that intrigue him and strict church doctrine, which rejects such deviations as the tools of the devil. Nancy, on the other hand, "doesn't have a deep faith in God," according to a former East Wing official. "She was a perfect candidate for this."
Those privy to Nancy's consultations say she never adjusted her own travel schedule, only Ronnie's, to the stars: since the assassination attempt, her husband's well-being has been her first concern. When it comes to his security, says a confidante, "she worries in her dreams; she wakes up worrying."
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."
In a sense, For the Record was preordained the day Don Regan stormed out of the White House. As he rode through the February darkness along the Potomac to his Mount Vernon estate, he brooded about what had happened and determined to write a book. He had his meticulous notes put in a word processor and then brought in Novelist Charles McCarry, who helped Alexander Haig write his memoir, Caveat, to restructure the material.