How close do you get to your political leaders?

[Antilogic]

I live in New Hampshire. I have neighbors that won't vote for any president that they haven't shaken hands with, and that rule typically does not constrain their ballot very much.

I got a bone to pick with your state, regarding the order of primaries.



Anyway, I know the current Secretary of Energy from when he was the head of MITEI (Ernest Moniz)--he used to host seminars and discussion panels. He probably couldn't pick me out of a lineup, but that's how these things go.

Other than that, I've seen John Lewis at a public appearance (he is a Representative from Atlanta and a BFD from the Civil Rights days) when I was at GT, and Scotty Brown made a trip to my lab for a photo-op two years ago when he was a Senator. I saw all the surviving presidents (and their motorcades with SS) during the Ted Kennedy funeral--they gathered here in Boston for a service, but only from a distance. That's about it for national offices.

Back in my old Ohio hometown, I lived a few doors down from the mayor. Small place, just about everyone knew each other.

 

[strijder20]

I've encountered both the former chairwoman of my community's (Flanders) parliament and the leader of Flanders' most important political party when I was young. I interviewed the former too.

 

[householder]

I live in New Hampshire. I have neighbors that won't vote for any president that they haven't shaken hands with

I take the opposite approach, and use a ten-foot pole for assistance.

 

[dutchfire]

I've met some MPs.

 

[BvBPL]

...I couldn't think of 4 other people I knew who might want to have dinner with Justin Trudeau.

But he's so dreamy!

 

[Birdjaguar]

In the US State and Local politicians are very easy to get into a room with and pretty easy to meet. Typical congressional reps (House or Senate) can be met if you live in their state.

I saw Tip O'Neil in an airport once and walked right up and said hello. That was pre 911 though.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I see two city council persons every Sunday, one of them at vestry meetings every month, and bump into the mayor irregularly at the coffee shoppe. It helps that I work at the library, he at City Hall, locations which are side by side and across the street from said coffee shop.

As for the governor, senators, representatives, etc, I never meet them and have little interest in. Politics is meaningless beyond the small scale.

 

[Leonel]

I was in the same theater as Chris Patton, Hong Kong's last British governor. I was looking around when I saw him way in the back.

 

[Arachnofiend]

I went to a Bush rally in 2003.

I was young and foolish and I am sorry.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

But he's so dreamy!

He's cute, but if that's all I wanted, I can gaze at his photo.

He has policies and opinions I can't agree with, so no, I have no interest in having dinner with him unless it comes with a sincere apology for his staff ignoring peoples' emails pre-leadership campaign. That in itself was enough for me to drop him from my top 3 choices (since they opened up the voting to non-members, I decided to vote).

 

[Leonel]

I went to a Bush rally in 2003.

I was young and foolish and I am sorry.

It's okay! We've all been there!

 

[carmen510]

I currently attend university in Washington D.C., so I get to be pretty close to our national leaders.

I also met Mayor Bloomberg, because my family is friends with a translator that he hired when he traveled to China a few years back.

 

[Leifmk]

As for politicians, can't say I've ever met any of them socially but I get a glimpse of various parliamentary politicians and the occasional minister quite often, since I work a couple of blocks from the parliamentary building. My job is in an agency that reports to the Ministry of Finance so I've also been one guy in the crowd at meetings or presentations where the Minister of Finance has appeared, a few times.

As far as non-elected influential bureaucrats are concerned, the director of my agency is one of them and so is the director of the other agency that shares our office building, although I'm pretty sure that neither of them knows me as anything other than one more face in the hallways or the cafeteria [1]. (Both of these guys have some power over economic policy and appear in the national media with some frequency.)

[1] Our previous director, now retired, was on the other hand that kind of political/organizational being who'd remember something about every single of his several hundred employees. For example when I started working there he noticed my surname and wondered if I was any relation to a guy he'd been friends with in university (my father's cousin, as it happened; it's not a very common surname), and whenever I bumped into him years later he'd chat a little about my family. He was like that with everyone.

 

[Silurian]

I walked past Tony Benn (former Labour minister) on Westminster Bridge once.

And I have walked down Downing Street before Thatcher had the gates erected.

 

[Perfection]

I keep my distance because no matter how many times you shower afterwards you can't get the stench of hypocrisy off you.

 

[Grisu]

as a youth, I met and shook hands with a federal councilor (Adolf Ogi) at the inaugration of a new gym

and I walked past another federal councilor (Doris Leuthard) about a year ago on the train station.....don't quite remember if she was president at the time.

I met/talked and walked with a member of our Nationalrat (basically our house of representatives) at a 'Banntag'. That's a traditional event in my area where you walk the 'Bann' (border) of your community (traditionally that was to check that your nice neighbours hadn't moved the border markers )

 

[Mouthwash]

I once saw Netanyahu's car (my father said it was him- it was solid black and probably armored) pass us by on the highway to Jerusalem. That's about it.

 

[Formaldehyde]

When I was in high school, I saw RM Nixon at the St Pete Clearwater airport.

Bill Clinton went right by my apartment window on his way to talk at the UN. They pulled up all the mailboxes on 2nd Avenue thinking someone might put a bomb in one of them. But I could have easily nailed his limo with an RPG unless I was in the cross hair of a sniper rifle at the time.

The Indian UN ambassador lived on my apartment floor. I chatted with him all the time waiting for the elevator in the morning.

I saw a number of elected politicians in three different ticker tape parades: One to honor the Pope, one for the Iran Embassy hostages, and one to honor the 1980 Olympics team. The mayor was always there along with the senators from the state along with a number of local representatives.

I also bumped into lots of celebrities living in Manhattan. OJ Simpson waved and smiled at me as we passed each other on Madison Avenue. I stood right next to Martin Sheen between scenes while he was making a movie in Central Park at the carousel ride. I actually scared Dean Smith so badly gawking at him that he turned around and walked back into his hotel on Park Avenue. I once had basically the same effect on Emerson Fittipaldi as we passed each other.

 

[Mouthwash]

Could you have had an RPG? Do they do background checks on people in the neighborhood?

 

[Antilogic]

Hey man, don't tread on Formy's 2nd amendment rights.