All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

While much of America had its eyes skyward, tracking what was thought to be a boy in a run-away balloon, President Obama was dealing with another boy very much on the ground.

"Why do people hate you?" asked 4th-grader Terence Scott, posing the final question at the president's Town Hall Meeting this afternoon at the University of New Orleans.

The youngster seemed earnest and genuinely distressed about harsh words he's heard people direct at the 44th President.

"They supposed to love you," said the youngster, "and God is love."

"That's what I'm talking about," said the president, grateful for words of kindness and support. He was on a trip to explain why it took him nine months to make his first visit as president to a city still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Mr. Obama tried to reassure the kid that it's not as bad as he thinks.

"First of all, I did get elected president, so not everybody hates me now," he told the 4th grader. But he conceded that "if you're watching TV lately, it seems like everybody's just getting mad all the time."

"You've got to take it with a grain of salt," the president explained. "Some of it is just what's called politics."

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Meghan McCain, blogger and daughter of former presidential candidate Senator John McCain (R-AZ), wrote in the Daily Beast online magazine that her dating life is “on life support” after her father’s failed campaign.

And she blames her dad.

“Of all the things people warned would happen post-election, no one ever said anything about how complicated dating would become. Especially if your dad loses the election,” McCain said. “I have become something I used to despise: people who let politics dictate his or her attraction to someone.”

To illustrate her frustration, Miss McCain explained a troubling recent interaction with a potential suitor.

“One extreme fan of my mother’s recently told me I could be ‘his Cindy,’” she writes. “And then asked me if I ever wore pearls because they probably would look as good on me as they do on my mother.”

McCain thwarted the poor guy’s dreams: “Any guy that has a fetish for older women in pantsuits and large pearls obviously only finds my last name attractive about me.”

McCain previously showed off her no-nonsense, pop-culture-laden style on her blog, McCainblogette.com, where she documented traveling and campaigning for her father during the 2008 presidential campaign. She became a media fixture, speaking on behalf of her father in order to attract young voters.

The once potential First Daughter wrote she can usually tell within the first 30 seconds if a man is only interested in her because of the prospect of meeting her father. In the past, she said, she has been able to keep politics from hindering her relationships, and assumed that would continue after the campaign.

She also said she did not try to influence her Columbia University friends’ political persuasions last year – but “when it comes to dating, it's become an entirely different subject,” she said.

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The important matters of state can wait: During a question and answer session in South Korea today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about the nature of love.

“I feel like more of an advice columnist than a Secretary of State today,” Clinton joked at the start of her response.

“I am very lucky because my husband is my best friend and he and I have been together for a very long time,” she continued. “Longer than most of you have been alive. And we have an an endless conversation. We never get bored. We get deeply involved in all of the work that we do and talk about it constantly and I just feel very fortunate that I have a relationship that has been so meaningful to me over my adult life.”

Clinton said there really is no description for love.

“How does anybody describe love?” she asked. “I mean, poets have spent millenia writing about love. Psychologists and authors of all sorts write about it. I think if you can describe it you may not fully be experiencing it because it is such a personal relationship.”

The secretary’s comments come a week after Valentine’s Day. Oddly enough, last Valentine’s Day this reporter had a personal interaction with Clinton: She called with well wishes because my significant other was stuck on the campaign trail following the then-presidential candidate.

Click here to watch the phone call.