Let's have a fun thread about politicians....

[Kelli in TN]

and let's keep it fun, okay? This idea was inspired by AmyinPA's thread about meeting Newt Gingrich. Let's all share our favorite meeting a politician stories.

Remember, this is a fun thread so no hijacking it to make a political statement. Start a new thread if you need to do that.

 

Okay, me first.

 

We were living in a small Tennessee town and the Bill Frist bus came through. We called it a field trip day and went to meet him. My oldest child was about 9 at the time and was wearing a homeschool t-shirt. Well, Mr. Frist picked my kid out of the "crowd" and came up to him and started shaking his hand while talking to him about he would make sure that H.R.6 would not come to pass. He was very friendly and sweet and my son was just awed by him.

 

Then, when everyone assembled outside to watch the bus pull away, Mr. Frist walked to the back of the bus, opened the window closest to where we were standing, leaned out of it and reassured Robby that H.R.6 would be blocked. He was still hollering and waving to my son as the bus pulled away.

 

Robby came home and used Bill Frist stickers to cover his bedroom door from top to bottom. Bill Frist was a like a rockstar to Robby that year.

 

Also, I used to work in the church nursery with Ed Bryant's wife. I had to totally get over the whole "she's Ed Bryant's wife" thing and just think of her as another nursery volunteer and let her change diapers!!

 

So, what politician has been nice to you or yours?

[Guest Virginia Dawn]

My dad shook hands with JFK when he was still Senator Kennedy. My parents went to DC to pay their respects at his grave site soon after he died. We have pictures.

[Old Dominion Heather]

I took a whole class of fifth graders out in the fields behind our school in sleet to meet then Governor George Allen (of racial insensitivity fame). He was in town for the groundbreaking of the National D-Day Memorial, which is built next door to the school where I was teaching at the time. Very, cold. Very, very cold.

 

His press people sent me a picture to commemorate the event. :001_huh: Very odd. I was just in the background while he was shaking hands with the kids.

[Mrs. Readsalot]

I was married to a Marine officer at the time and President and Mrs. Bush were visiting Hawaii. Millie was due to have puppies in a few weeks and the other wives directed Mrs. Bush to me as I had whelped several liters of puppies. We talked about taking care of Millie and the puppies. She asked for my best whelping hint and I told her why I like to use a plastic baby pool for whelping. She loved the idea and I was thrilled to see she had used it when the book about Millie came out. She is a very nice down to earth lady and it was a joy to met her.

[triadofchaos]

when i was in high school, my dad was a volunteer lobbyist for the Virginia PTA and did some state and federal level work. when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was on the agenda, i went to the American Legion Auxillary's summer government program- Girls State and got elected to represent VA at Girls Nation (same program, just at the national level with two girls from each state in the country.) as a Senator at Girls Nation, my piece of proposed legislation was the v-chip portion of the Telecommunications Act. when it passed the real Congress and was signed into law, the White House decided to do a televised "round table" type discussion with experts and families w/children to advertise parts of the legislation like TV ratings systems and v-chips to the public. my family (mom, dad, me and 3 younger siblings) were invited to attend. when we got to the White House, we were ushered into this room where the meeting would be held and televised and told to find the seats with our names on them. my dad, mom and 3 siblings' names were all in a row on one large couch but mine was not. i went hunting for mine, found my chair on the far side of the room and sat down. out of curiosity, i looked to my left and right. the chairs on either side of me held white pieces of paper that said "VPOTUS" and "POTUS" on them. i thought for a minute and suddenly it hit me. Vice President of the United States. President of the United States. no matter your politics, for a 17yo young lady to spend a few hours seated between the President and Vice President of her country, chatting with them about the subject at hand, was an unbelievable experience. at the end of the session we shook hands and they left. the VP's Domestic Policy Chief approached me and offered me a summer internship. i took it and the summer between high school and college, i worked at the White House and met all sorts of people. it's probably one of my favorite summers ever. and i have some really great pictures and press clippings from the event!

[Amy loves Bud]

I'll play. In college, I served on a committee that brought in various speakers for a panel discussion on a foreign policy topic each year. We had some big wigs - Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Ed Bradley and George Will for moderators, just to name a few.

 

One year we had James Callaghan, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I was assigned as his escort, which means I kept him on schedule and got to ride in the limo with him to the various events of the day, and I even got to ride in the private plane from College Station to Houston with him. Lots of opportunity for real conversation. He was an incredibly kind man who was very interested in all the students, happily answered our questions and encouraged us in our aspirations. It was a highlight of my college career.

 

Anyway, we placed a snack basket in his room upon his arrival, and since we're in Texas there were pecans in it. He had never eaten pecans and he loved them. He talked about them a lot, LOL!

 

Also, for his last lunch with us, our committee took him to a TexMex restaurant, and he was very intrigued by the picante sauce. He didn't taste the pecans in it.

 

Get it? Pecante/picante? :lol:

[Remudamom]

Let's see, the closest I can think of is that my mother was at the University of Alabama at the library steps (?) on the first day that blacks were admitted and witnessed Gov. George Wallace's fit. I think she was pushed down in the resulting riot, and her mom saw it on TV.

[Stacy in NJ]

Due to some social obligations related to dh's job, we attend some political fund raisers.

 

I've met and chatted with Rudy Giuliani, Jon Corzine (current GOV of NJ), the prior two govenors of NJ, Elliot Spitzer and Nicholas Sarkozy. I had and have quite the crush on Sarkozy. He's just soooo French and charming in person.:tongue_smilie:

[LoriM]

I met President Ford, President Reagan, and President Bush at various youth events when I was a young politically-minded woman. I routinely meet generals, but actually got to brief a 4-star general as a military spouse representative to a conference once. Oh, and what impressed me more than shaking the presidents' hands was talking for about 30 minutes with secret service agents prior to presidental entry to the event. Now those guys are cool.

[OnTheBrink]

The closest I've gotten to a politician (other than local politicos I've probably seen but not recognized) was Ronald Regan in 1984. He was doing a rally at the Embarcadero in San Diego and the SDSU marching band was asked to play. We were seated on one side of the fountain; his podium was on the other, so I got great snaps of him coming out, waving at us and then speaking. It was such a cool day!

[Soph the vet]

I saw Ronald Reagan in 1984 as well! He spoke at an outdoor rally in Fairfield, CT (where I grew up). We skipped school and went to the rally. My friend had her plastic squirt gun confiscated by the Secret Service! I was not old enough to vote yet but I would have voted for Reagan after hearing his inspiring message.

 

My parents went to the White House for dinner when Carter was in office and shook hands with him in a receiving line. Not sure why they were invited especially since they usually voted Republican:lol:!

[RebeccaC]

A man in our church is a personal friend of Speaker Hastert. Through this friend Hastert heard about my sons and the medical treatment they were getting and CAN which at that time had an IL chapter and I was part of the board in IL. He asked to meet me and we met at a pro-life dinner and then later at his Geneva office. He then helped me meet many politicians in DC so that CAN could get some needed legislation through the house. Clinton sign the medical research bill in to law but congress never funded it.

 

So for about a year or two I did some lobbying on the Hill. The offices of many congressmen are under the capitol building and it is like a rats maze down there. The endless twisting walls are a plain dull white and all the doors are painted the same dull white. Open the door tho and the other side can be something else. Some of the offices were just amazingly plush.

 

I went o school in Israel at Hebrew U on a scholarship part of that scholarship was to have my picture taken with Shemon Perez. He has been a player in Israeli politics for years and has held the office of Israeli Foreign Minister.

 

During the Gulf War I was stationed in UAE at Abu Dhabi Air Port and the Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan who was the head of UAE at the time came to inspect our office. He acknowledged each man in the office in one way or another but of course did not acknowledge me in any way since I was a woman. I of course followed the dress code that he laid out for women working at the public air port which was dresses to the calf and sleeves no shorter than 3/4 and no collar bone showing in the neck line. Every one at the public air port had to wear civilian clothing and there was only a hand full of women allowed to work there. So I fought the war wearing dresses that I had to run out an buy just before being deployed.

[Colleen in NS]

Ooooh fun! This is like the "meeting a famous person" thread, only with a specific twist!

 

In 1995 or 96 when dh and I lived in Ottawa (Canada's capital city), we went out to Parliament Hill for Canada Day celebrations. Jean Chretien, the former Prime Minister of Canada, was walking through the crowds, shaking hands with people. Dh and I were in the crowd, and I stuck my hand out to try to shake Mr. Chretien's hand as he walked by, and at the last minute, I grabbed dh's hand and got him to shake the man's hand instead. Made dh's day.

 

As an aside, I remember (having just been in Canada for a year or two) being really surprised that Mr. Chretien was so free to mingle in the crowd - there may have been guards around, but it was nothing like the Secret Service.

 

Also, when I was about 11 or 12, I got a personal postcard from Amy Carter (I had written a letter to her).

[MomofSeven]

I took all my kids (5 at the time) and he had six. We both homeschool so he took a real interest in us and spent most of the time talking to my children while I looked on.