On page 287 of President Nixon: Alone in the White House, Richard Reeves states:
"If
that deficit spending would entice more private spending, by both
corporations and consumers, then the Republican president was now ready
to buy into the pump-priming theories of John Maynard Keynes, the
British economist, patron saint of liberal economists and big-spending
politicians. But that did not change the fact that most of the men
around him were still conservatives who had always seen inflation as the
true devil."
When I read this, I thought about the West Wing
episodes, "Memorial Day" (from Season 5) and "NSF Thurmont" (from
Season 6). In these episodes, President Jed Bartlett and his
Chief-of-Staff, Leo McGarry, are on different pages on how to address
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Bartlett's earlier days in the
White House, Leo was his mentor when it came to foreign policy, for
President Bartlett was not as experienced in that field. By the end of
Season 5, however, President Bartlett had his own ideas about the Middle
East, and Leo recognized that it may have come to the point where
President Bartlett might not value his counsel, for the two of them were
on different pages.
This reportedly occurs in real life, too.
President George W. Bush supposedly relied on Vice-President Dick
Cheney's counsel on foreign policy in the early days of his
Administration, but it got to the point where the two of them diverged.
Cheney supported strikes on Syria, for example, whereas President Bush
did not. I've even read talk that Bush was briefly considering
replacing Cheney with Senator Bill Frist! On certain issues, Bush and
Cheney were on different pages.
I read an article recently about
how Christians become apostates (non-Christians). One factor that the
author mentioned is that the Christians surround themselves with
non-believers, such as atheists or non-Christian Jews. That may be a
contributing factor, but I think that there are many cases in which it's
the other way around: that a person becomes uncomfortable with the
Christian faith, due to intellectual doubts or other factors, and that
person then finds that he or she does not quite fit into the Christian
community anymore. That person then seeks out people who are on the
same page.