Never. I have no respect for the man, his military service, his public service, his values, or his presidency. I wish him nothing but the worst in life. Shaking hands would be tantamount to me saying “Oh what the hell, let’s let bygones, etc.” Also, the temptation to suddenly jerk him towards me while kneeing him in the balls would be impossibly overwhelming.
Not for a lot of money!
I would prefer to simply avoid both.
But I would try to show common civility if there was no option other than to meet them.
BTW-- I work at the Nashville Airport, near where Presidents get on & off AF1. I try to avoid being out when they are there, & sometimes skip work to avoid them altogether.
This.
I would greet the Pope as equals, which I believe we are - both spiritual people trying to make our world a kinder place more full of love. I don’t entirely agree with how he’s going about it, but I do think he’s sincere with his God=love rap. (*This *pope. Not all popes.)
Bush I would simply, and in line with everything Miss Manners and my mother have taught me, coolly ignore.
I would shake his hand, even get a picture if I could.
Just curious, is this because you like him and the job he is doing or just because you would understandably want a picture of yourself shaking the hand of the President?
I said I’d do it, I didn’t say I’d like it. I didn’t like getting lunch for my co-worker, but I did that, too.
You’re right about talking about how my mother raised me, though. I’ll take that back.
You simply stay seated. Communion is received by getting up in line to receive the host. If you don’t feel it’s proper to accept, you just don’t get in line.
Now, if you got up in line, to receive Communion, they wouldn’t ask if you were a Catholic. So you COULD go and receive it.
However, by the standards of the Church, they do believe it’s wrong, unless you’ve made your first Eucharist.
(Of course, I really don’t care. A friend of mine who was a Protestant used to go to Mass with me sometimes, and she’d just get up in line with me.)
In virtually any real world scenario where you have the opportunity to shake the President’s hand, short of him ambushing you on the street with paw extended, there are multiple points predicate to the actual face to face at which you might politely refrain from participating in the meet and greet event if the prospect of shaking hands disturbs you. If you position yourself passively or actively to receive a Presidential handshake then act like a tool, you’re a mannerless tool no matter how you want to spin your actions.
Although I’m a registered Republican, I’m not a Bush fan by any stretch of the most fevered imagination. IMO shake or avoid the opportunity, but don’t be an ass just to be an ass.
The mental image this gave me has had me giggling for about three minutes straight. Thank you.
I will not shake the hand of a war criminal.
“I know, officer, it was the damndest thing. I offered him a friendly handshake, and he grabbed both my hands and pulled them to his throat and strangled himself with them before I knew what was happening. Didn’t say a word, either. Simply killed himself with my hands as his instrument. Just another tragic mystery. Mmm.”
Luckily this will never happen to me, but if confronted with the situation, I wouldn’t shake his hand. I would keep the sour look off my face. I’d avoid a face-to-face encounter if possible, but since me even being in the same room as the guy is a huge hypothetical anyway, I might as well address the extreme situation. It’s not just to be an asshole or make a political statement, but because I think he’s done a horrible job and he is a profoundly disappointing president. He has lost my respect and I refuse to perform an action that indicates otherwise. I think he has allowed himself to be an instrument of harm not just to the US, but the world. A handshake is a neutral, sometimes cordial greeting. I feel neither way about him.
To me, everyone starts at a neutral level of respect. If you do something I deem good for others, my respect for you increases. If you do something I deem bad for others, it decreases. He has done multiple things that I think are bad for multiple people. I will not happily greet someone I feel contempt toward.
I think it is sort of a moot point for me. If we were ever in the same room together, I would be calling Dubya an asshole from 50 feet away and I doubt his security would let him get near enough to me to shake hands. I truly believe Bush should be tried for war crimes at the Haag.
I am of the age that I never, in my wildest dreams, ever thought anyone could be a worse President than Nixon…boy, was I proven wrong.
That said, I would also never shake the hand of OJ Simpson, Osama bin Laden, Kim Jong, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Russian President Putin. I am an equal opportunity snubber.
As far as the Pope is concerned, as one of the millions of ex-Catholics (ever notice you almost never meet ex-Protestants, ex-Baptists, ex-Jews, but wow, lots and lots of ex-Catholics?), I wouldn’t hesitate to snub him - then again - as a Gay man, I doubt he would eagerly be wanting to shake my hand either, so - we’re even.
I would not shake his hand, nor would I let him meet my children.
As I said in last year’s thread, I would shake hands with GWB. In fact, I would relish it. I probably couldn’t get away with looking at my own hand afterwards and saying, “Checking for blood…” but I’d like to look in his eyes and see what, if anything, is there.
I would not kiss the Pope’s ring since I’m not Catholic, but I would not otherwise snub him.
I would curtsey to the Queen, because I know how to curtsey, and it would simply be cool to have done so.
I have hated Dubya for an entire decade, and under no circumstances would or could I be that much of a hypocrite. I would just shake my head and go on.
I don’t dislike him,tho for the first time in my life, I was hoping a democrat wins the upcoming election because of him,but i no longer feel that way.
But yeah,I think it would be cool to be photographed with the POTUS.
I’d quite like to shake Liz’s hand, the pope? Not so much.
George? Not at all.
That said if I was in an unavoidable situation and his hand was there I would shake it. I’m sure I couldn’t catch his cooties off a handshake! I’m not kissing his ring or the popes though 
As a non-Catholic you can get a blessing from the priest, if you wish, if you get in line during Communion. Just cross your arms and murmur, “A blessing, please, Father.”
Nitpick: the Queen’s honorific is “Your Majesty.” The Pope’s (and the Dalai Lama’s, incidentally) is “Your Holiness.”
Absolutely not. I couldn’t care less about protocol, or being rude. I have nothing positive to say about Bush, and I certainly wouldn’t want him to get the idea that I may by shaking his hand. I would most certainly ignore him, but wouldn’t go so far as to be outright rude, unless he provoked it.
The Pope? Eh. I’ve got nothing against him. I’d greet him as equals. Again, protocol is irrelevant to me, because I don’t practice the faith and I don’t have any reason to consider him anything other than an equal. “Pleasure to meet you, sir” sounds about right.