Bill Clinton made me miss happy hour at the Long Bar in Shanghai. A mere 20 meters of open ground/stairway. But Noooooooooooooooo, I had to wait for the Pres to finally make an entrance and his entire motorcade complete with 2 ambulances flow in special from the US and the entire circus made their way out of the hotel.
Dubya made me close my windows. It was detailed in a thread long ago.
This is why you shouldn’t leave kansas and come to Shanghai
Around 1991 or 1992, I saw Richard Nixon having lunch with Trisha at the Seafood Shanty in Paoli, PA. A group of us were out for a coworker’s birthday, and Nixon came over and shook hands with everyone after one of our group went and spoke to him. Though I agree with Bob Dole (see below), it was still interesting to shake hands with the man.
At a White House event, Jimmy Carter, Jerry Ford, and Richard Nixon were standing next to each other. Bob Dole quipped, “There they are. See no evil, hear no evil, and…evil.”
If we’re counting foreign presidents, I met Benazir Bhutto a while ago when she came to Hartford. She’s very dignified and had some good things to say.
BTW my Clinton experience came in August 1998, right in the middle of the impeachment fiasco
As for possible future presidents, I’ve met Joe Lieberman on a number of occasions and actually had a conversation with him last summer. Also, even though he won’t run in 2004, I became close with many people in Evan Bayh’s office and I got to meet the man himself a few times.
Jimmy Carter spoke at my college in the fall of 1975, when he was still a longshot. He was quite charismatic, I remember.
In early 1992, Bill Clinton’s plane briefly touched down at the Florence, SC airport, and since I was living in Florence at the time, I went out to see him. He shook hands with the poeple, then spoke to the press over to one side, away from everyone else. I was kinda miffed; I didn’t care one way or the other about shaking his hand, but I wanted to hear what he had to say.
Oh yeah - he’s a big man.
I shook hands with LBJ through an airport chain-link fence in about 1966.
When Clinton was reelected I was dateing this chick whose brother is some bigshot lawyer in D.C. He got us tickets to the inagural gala where I saw Clinton and his wife. To be honest I was more excited to see Aretha Franklin’s performance than I was to see the President. It was a cool experiance. Apperantly it is pretty hard to get tickets to those things so I felt rather cool to have been there.
Saw Bush Senior several times during at Smithsonian or National Gallery of Art, where I worked at the time. Saw Bill Clinton jogging on the Mall early in the morning (and before they built they white house jogging track).
Saw Gorbachev on 16th St. when he visited in 85? 86?
Saw the Dalai Lama at a Smithsonian luncheon.
Saw the King of Sweden at a Smithsonian dinner, and Prince Charles at another one.
Well, in 2000, I was downtown when Mr. Gores’ mtotrcade stopped traffic to go by, so I saw his CAR…
and met a presidential candidate;)
In my home town of Twin Falls, Idaho, I saw Reagan give a campaign speech in 1976.
Near misses:
Senator Frank Church, who was briefly a legitimate presidential contender in 1976 (remember ABC, “Anybody But Carter?”), gave the commencement speech at my high school graduation.
When my family was living in Alhambra, California, I briefly saw Bobby Kennedy in a motorcade that went by my school just days before he was assassinated.
I once saw a very disturbing photograph of LBJ showing reporters his appendectomy scar (I think the photo was in MAD magazine).
Bush the Current, then gov of Texas. During dinner at CSG National Meeting in San Antonio in… when was that? 98? Yep, 98. Was a couple tables over.
near-presidential material, Jack Kemp, at CSG meeting in San Juan in '95.
“Top of head” sighting of Hipólito Mejía, then-candidate now president of the Dominican Republic, during a visit of his to Puerto Rican political leaders in early 2000.
Was in the West Wing but Bill wasn’t home, 1996. Meeting with a deputy assistant whosit; stopped down the hall from Hillary’s office (but the bulk of the meeting was over at the old EOB next door)
I saw LBJ and Aleksei Kosygin at the Glassboro summit in '67. I remember thinking that LBJ looked awfully pink for some reason.
I saw Gerald Ford land at Monterey airport on Air Force 2. This was hours after Carter was sworn in. Ford left to go golf in the Pebble Beach tournament, I think it was still the Crosby then. Also saw him on the course a couple days later.
I saw the Dalai Lama speak a couple times.
I saw the pope in his popemobile on Geary in SF maybe 10 years ago.
I saw Clinton ride by in his limo in SF last year.
Saw Ford give a very short speech while running for reelection.
Saw Governor Holshouser (NC) in the bathroom at an ACC tournament. The poor guy was standing at a urinal trying to take a piss and people kept coming up and slapping him on the back to him to tell him how great they thought he was. That ended any thoughta I ever had about going into politics.
I got to go to one of the town hall meetings (at a television station - the day television stations relace actual town halls I’m moving into a cave) where Clinton did his thing in about October '92. From the audeince he seemed… eh, ok. But I got in line to shake his hand afterwards and it was completely different. It was at that point in the campaign when his voice was quite a bit hoarse, but jeez, he could have told me Satanism was the way to go and I would have handed over my wallet gladly. Step back 10 feet and I’m sane again. Kinda creepy, but he does have some mystical juju about him.
And I half concur with the others about his handshake. While it is surprisingly soft, it also had this outline of firmness. So it was firm on the outside, soft on the inside. No wonder garry Trudeau represented him with a waffle.
I concur on Clinton’s soft handshake and his weirdly charismatic mojo. I met him at a teen volunteer summit/convention type thing in DC in 1997. Honestly, I was a fan but I didn’t think he was cute on anything. But the line moved, I stepped up to him, our hands touched, our eyes met, and had he asked me to be his unrepentant love slave, I would have nodded and kneeled. It was very, very weird.
In the last year or so of Reagan’s presidency I was driving north on I-95 in So Broward. First we noticed the dark sedans heading south and no other cars driving along the highway N or S, one or two low flying planes then in the distance we saw it! The motorcade and presidential limo! Big Deal; but it was strange being the only other vehicle on the highweay we must 've just missed the ramp closings and security ‘sweeps’
Nervous yeah shit we were holding too but beeped and waved shot peace signs etc etc.