It seems it was her wife who pushed for that. By reading the article, it doesn't sound like he believed any of that.

> "If it makes you feel better, go ahead and do it," she quoted the president as saying.

Also

> Both the president and Nancy Reagan denied that any policies or decisions were based on astrology.

So we can't really tell to what extent, if any, those consultations affected the actual policies.

In general, I don't trust politicians by default. Still, I also don't trust astrologers (and even less so), so there is no reason for me to believe the astrologer more than the president.

It was Nancy Reagan.

From the linked article:

> The president became aware of the consultations and warned his wife to be careful because it might look odd if it came out, Nancy Reagan wrote in her book.

> Nancy Reagan began consulting Quigley after the 1981 assassination attempt on her husband. She wanted to keep him from getting shot again, Nancy Reagan wrote in her 1989 memoir, "My Turn." "If it makes you feel better, go ahead and do it," she quoted the president as saying.

> The consultations were revealed to great embarrassment for the White House in a 1988 book by former White House chief of staff Donald Regan, who blamed the first lady for his ouster a year earlier. Regan said almost every major move and decision the Reagans made during his time as chief of staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up horoscopes. He did not know her identity.

> The woman was in fact Joan Quigley, an heiress and Republican political activist. Quigley told The Associated Press in 1988 after her identity was revealed that she was a "serious, scientific astrologer."

A "serious, scientific astrologer", but no such thing exists, does she understand formulating null hypothesis and hypothesis testing statistics? probably not, so not scientific, any scientist actually applying the scientific method to astrology will quickly distance herself from astrology at all.

Tony Blair and George Bush praying for guidance.

Of course he now denies this so that never happened, he also said that 'doing so would not have been wrong'. Ever the lawyer. My client didn't do it, and if he did it wasn't wrong.

Nor did he ever claim that 'God influenced his deliberations'...

If God doesn't exist, then God isn't whispering in his ear like an astrologist would.

If God does exist, then what's the problem exactly?

That God isn't accountable and wasn't elected.

True, but how is that a problem; it is God. Is a human a better than God to make those decisions?

I suppose all of this assumes that God is infallible, but I imagine God has more information and processing power than the President.

I am not suggesting a theocracy. I doubt God is whispering in anyone's ear today, and humans can still make bad decisions and claim it was God's will. Just a thought exercise.

When people claim that God led their hand what they mean is that they will just do whatever they want to do and there isn't a thing you can do about because you are no match for God. This has caused 100's of millions of people to die so far.

I don't disagree.

> humans can still make bad decisions and claim it was God's will.

its a problem in that there's no alignment mechanism between what god wants and what the people want/need.

god could still be infallible at achieving his goals but they still arent the right goals.

There ware some claims that Putin consulted shamans over the use of nuclear weapons, wanted to get their blessing.