re: Have you ever met (or shaken hands) the President?

Richard Nixon January 1969.

Gerald Ford, 10 years after he was POTUS.

Jimmy Carter in 95 and George W about a month before he left office.

GWB and Obama

Clinton. Purely by accident. I was in college. Used to get my haircut by a daycare he visited every time he visited NOLA. The daycare was located near the base in Belle Chasse.
I was getting my haircut and walk out. Walk to my car and secret service is doing the mirror thing checking the undercarriage for explosives. Secret service was everywhere.
I ask what is going on and they say the president is on the way and he was stopping by the daycare to say hello.
They said I wasn’t leaving until after he left. Sure as hell..the Clinton motorcade pulls up. He gets out, shakes hands, high fives.
He then tells me hello calls me by name and says he will have to stop and golf next time through.
First thought: holy shite secret service is good. They knew all about me and let him know.
Reality: Clinton saw my name tag, work polo and was On the spot.
That is how I shook hands with a president.

The one I was most happy about was meeting and shaking the hand of President Reagan on the SS President in 1980 toward the end of the election. I was 13 amd myself and a few other kids were stage props standing by the soon to be President. A few years later I got to shake his hand again at a speech he did at Lafrienere Park.

I got to shake the first President Bush's hand when he was vice-President and I was volunteering for the 1988 convention. It was before the convention and we were doing grunt work setting up.

The oddest thing about that convention is that I got to meet Dan Quayle before his name got out as the VP nominee. He was not very impressive in person and I was shocked he got the nod.

Really odd was speaking with Amy Carter for an extended time when she attended Tulane having ZERO idea who it was until someone pointed it out to me.

I grew up about a mile away from Ft Meade in MD. Both my parents were in healthcare, but everyone we associated with at church, all of my classmates parents, etc. were all NSA, CIA, and military. My uncle was also high up in the secret service. His wife is now a US Senator. Those connections had benefits, especially pre-9/11.

Reagan and GHWB held me when I was a baby (I'm young, i know). Met Clinton a couple of times. He had a chocolate lab Buddy I got to play with a few times who was cool as shite. Met GWB at one of his fundraisers prior to his 1st term. Some of his people asked my parents if it were okay for me to be in a picture with him, and that picture ended up in the paper. Moved to south Louisiana in 2000 and have only been back to the DC area about 3 times since. I'll be honest, I had no interest to even try to meet Obama. I was in DC this past April, and tried to hit my aunt and uncle up to see if they could set something up for me to meet Trump, but got in touch with them a little too late. CSB, I know.

No presidents but I shot the shite with Mike Foster for a good while about 10 years ago.

Also had a conversation with Mitch Landrieu when he was still LG. He came off as a creep and an idiot.

I also talked offshore fishing with a very drunk Kenny Chesney for about half an hour and didn’t realize it was him until after the fact. He looks very different with a baseball cap instead of a cowboy hat.

I met Bill Clinton a couple of times as a kid. Probably shook his hand but this was the '70s or very early '80s so it's a little hazy. I do remember an event at a relative's camp with Clinton, Terry Bradshaw, Lee Majors, and Farrah Fawcett.

In more recent years I was at a nice country club in NC when I was blindsided with a passing introduction to John Roberts as he was going through confirmation as Chief Justice. I had a brief but intense flash of anxiety that everyone in the room could smell the loud and stinky baggy in my pocket. And another queasy feeling later when I realized that the well-dressed Hispanic guys I had offered a puff to on the course were probably not the grounds crew decked out for some Mexican holiday.

I shook hands with David Vitter.

Then I immediately washed them.