Although the plot of this movie is largely fantasy, there was a real instance in U.S. history of a president's administration covering up the extent of his stroke and debilitation and instead allowing an un-elected non-politician to govern in his place after his incapacity. In the autumn of 1919, about two years into
Woodrow Wilson's second term, he suffered a stroke that left him semi-paralyzed, partly blind, and mentally incapacitated to an extent that is, a century later, still not completely known. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment (which establishes the procedures for responding to a presidential incapacity) had not yet been ratified. Instead of Wilson simply resigning and passing the presidency to his vice-president, Thomas R. Marshall, what happened instead was that the extent of Wilson's illness was kept secret, and his second wife, Edith, started running the executive branch of the U.S. government in his place.
