Fuck No Rick Santorum kinda sums up my attitudes to this particular person.

this does too!

Even the Dutch hate him.

I'm so glad we've returned to an era where we Americans can be completely embarrassed by our politicians. Growing up with Bush, I thought that was just the way things were supposed to be.

You grew up under Bush? How old are you?

Depends on your definition of "growing up" for me. I lived through Clinton's years, but didn't become aware of politics until Dubya.

The first "political anything" I distinctly remember is of the Clintons dancing away to "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac when they won the '92 election. (I was 9 at the time.) I'd say I "grew up" during the Clinton administration but "matured, politically" during the Dubya years.

(I'm currently 28, for those too lazy to do the math at home .... :P)

Damn Kids! Where's my Geritol. :P I grew up under the aegis of Ronaldus Magnus...AKA Ronald Reagan(which is why I sometimes waver on the subject of human cloning).

I have pretty clear memories of Nixon and Watergate. I kinda vaguely remember Lyndon Johnson......yeah I'm old.

Nixon caused me childhood trauma....damned Watergate hearings pre-empted Captain Kangaroo. That was a very traumatic experience for a three year old. :P

This beats me... Slightly :P

I'm personally looking forward to people showing up on the forums that are younger than NationStates itself. Only three and a half years to go!

(Says the 24-year-old.)

My high school and college years were spent under Clinton. Of course, being of such a young and horny age, I couldn't understand why people were so outraged by the whole Monica thing - particularly since politicians and celebrities are caught with their pants down all the freakin' time. They don't usually try to subvert federal investigations while they're sexing it up, but whatever. :P

The first political thing I remember is the whole impeachment thing (though I had no real idea of what it was really all about at the time, I just sort of vaguely knew that the President was being impeached, and that might mean he'd have to leave office.) The second political thing I remember is 9/11, and the aftermath thereof.

I was 9 when Bush was elected, and 17 when Obama was elected. I'm 20 now. So most of my political growing up was under Bush, unfortunately.

It also means you were 13 or 14 when you first started interacting with us on NS. That's very interesting. :D

Anywho, that sounds like fun, actually: have everyone recall their first political memory. Mine was the election between Reagan and Mondale in 1984. I was in second grade, and when our teacher conducted a class election for president, Mondale only got like two votes. My next big political memory was probably the Challenger explosion a little over a year later. It affected me because I was so into astronomy at the time, and it scared me when my mom started talking about how the shuttle could be grounded permanently.

Can foreigners play, too? :D

My first political memory was the end of President Sarney's mandate, who was the first civilian president after decades of military dictatorship, and the election of President Collor, the first elected president in decades. A few years later, the entire country was in upheaval due to his impeachment proceedings, which were ultimately successful. And everybody in Brazil was happy because that somehow proved that we lived in a functional democracy. Or something.

I vaguely remember following the 1996 presidential election, but the political event that really got me hooked was the 1998 impeachment hearings. Highlights included my mom censoring the newspaper from me because I wasn't yet old enough to know about certain sexy details.

I remember Howard beating Keating (1996 Australian federal election, for non-Aussies), but it took another 5 years or so before I understood why my parents were so aghast at that. Didn't get to vote until 2007 but.

I learned to read from the newspaper when I was four-ish, and I must've come on the word "communist", because I know I asked my mother, "What is a communist?"

She dumbed it down for a little kid. She said communists were people who wanted everyone to share everything. Then she said her first boyfriend was a communist.

The idea that Mum had ever had a boyfriend who wasn't Dad was astonishing and fixed it in my mind. I was always in trouble for not sharing, so I got the idea that communists were very virtuous people and more likely to get to Heaven than I was.

With the predictable result that when one of those "now, make sure you behave for Auntie" visitors came to afternoon tea and said how very wicked those communists were ...

Yeah. That's when I learned for sure that everyone was more likely to get to Heaven than I was. :D

Earliest memory: sitting under my dad's outstretched legs while he watched Dan Rather talk about H.W. Bush, while images of Saddam Hussein on a speedboat flashed on the screen.

My first real comprehension was of the Lewinsky scandal.