If the sitting President, for whatever reason, became royally pissed off at you individually, would you be nervous about it? What about other elected officials? Non-US dopers, what about the leaders of your countries: would Gordon Brown (or Queen Elizabeth) inhabit your nightmares?
I wouldn’t be too worried if the president were mad at me, but he could probably do something to screw with my passport so that I’d have to return to the US and face the wrath of the IRS or whatever.
On the other hand, if I were sitting right in the Texas governor’s mansion and Rick Perry came storming all wrathful-like, I wouldn’t hesitate to laugh in his face. (Now with the Comptroller or the Lieutenant Governor I might tread a little more carefully . . .)
ETA: Why yes, I was thinking about John McCain just now, why do you ask?
Well, our current crop of PMs have been rather bland, try to get along with everyone types. I have no fear of them. But go back to the mid 70’s to the mid 80’s and we had Piggy. He was scary.
I wouldn’t be surprised “annoyances” had a difficult time caused by him. The easiest would be regular tax audits.
I don’t know what the boat and caravan manufacturers did to him, but he slapped a 20% tax on in 1979, wiping out the industry.
Reading further the Wiki link above gets this, so he wasn’t all bad.
I really wouldn’t want to piss off QE2 either. Those corgis have sharp teeth. I’m sure with the old boy network, a few murmurs in a corner would result in my death from “natural” causes. There’s a big book kept locked away that lists every assassination royalty has ever ordered that she flicks through nightly, giggling at every page turn.
If Bush was pissed off at me, I’d be terrified. I mean, he once made a statement that US officials should be able to pick up anybody off of the streets, even US citizens, for any reason :eek:
The thing is, if I pissed off a president or prime minister, I’d probably be at least a semi-public figure - after all, nothing sells papers more than people angering politicians . Public figures generally don’t just disappear, and any lesser degredations would probably be seen as bad PR. Besides, the very act of pissing him off would probably win me some major political allies.
In other words, if I’m powerful enough to actually get a head of government angry, I’m also powerful enough to shrug it off.
I would be terrified. Shrub is not the kind of guy whose bad side you want to get on, I’m thinking. I’m not sure I could escape his wrath in Mexico, either, and with the TSA on my ass like white on rice, I doubt I could make it into Canada.
I really wouldn’t want to piss off the Governator, though.
Yes I’d be nervous. He wouldn’t even need to do anything as dramatic as send assassins; he’d just need to off-the-books ask people like the IRS and FBI directors to make sure that “special attention” is paid to me. They’d find some excuse to make my life hell, guaranteed.
Nope. Wouldn’t bother me a bit. Alessan hit it square on the head. If I’m important enough to be pissed at, I’m important enough to have powerful allies. Screw him if he doesn’t like me. I don’t like him either.
I don’t think that Gordon Brown is physically capable of being pissed off, so no. Plus depending what I had done to piss him off, the retribution would probably be a tax increase.
Not necessarily. For example, if you blow the whistle on something that he finds embarrassing or otherwise wanted secret, you could anger him and have no allies at all.
Depends on the president in question, I think. For example, if Dick Cheney were president and was personally pissed off at me, I’d either go find a cave or sit in the middle of a really busy place where people abducting me would be noticed. On the other hand, if said president were… I’m trying to think of an absolutely harmless politician, but coming up blank. Let’s go with Bill Clinton (not harmless, but least stupid/dangerous one I could come up with that is widely known). I wouldn’t be all that concerned, as while I think I’d want to keep a low profile, I don’t think he’s the kind of guy that would KGB-style “disappear” me.
With Bush? I would be very afraid- he’s the lousy character who would take revenge personally and he has the power to make people come after me, arrest me and ship me to Gitmo, or hand me over to the Egyptians /other friendly allies for serious torturing.
The head of my own country, Angela Merkel? Although I disagree with her politics, she’s not the type for personal revenge-style.
One of the heads of my state (we are changing them a bit fast currently): I would be worried. All the upper CSU guys have no personal morals, they feel completly entitled and that laws don’t apply to them (they got away with everything in the past), so they could cause some bad trouble. No torture, but possibly prison on some trumped-up accusation that takes forever to sort out.
