Obama Visits His 50th State

It's nice to get a genuinely heartwarming moment out of the doldrums of politics every now and then, a little reminder of the lighter things in life. Although, if your state had been snubbed by the President for over six years, it might not seem like such a small thing. Such was the situation for the people of South Dakota, the only state to never receive a visit from President Obama — until now, that is! Because on Friday, a note sent to Obama by South Dakota girl Rebecca Kelley got her a presidential visit, and she seemed pretty excited.

The whole thing, be fore warned, is very aggressively cute. As KELOLAND detailed on Friday, 11-year-old Rebecca Kelley from the city of Vermillion wrote a prototypically earnest, adorably straightforward letter to the White House, asking Obama why he'd never visited her home state. The fact that he'd never once made a presidential trip to South Dakota had been sticking out like a sore thumb, by virtue of the fact that he'd literally been to every other state.

The letter, which the official White House Twitter account released for all to see on Thursday, concluded with a drawing of a broken heart, and a caption that left little to the imagination — "This is my heart because you haven't visited South Dakota."

My hat's off to her, because that P.S. is a world-class guilt trip. Needless to say, the stage was set for a fun opportunity. Taking advantage of a trip to South Dakota's Lake Area Technical Institute community college to deliver a commencement address, Obama actually got a moment to meet Kelley, who told KELOLAND that she'd never expected so much as a reply. You'd figure that getting some public love for drawing the president to your state would be a fun feeling for a kid that age, and based on her reaction she seemed to agree.

I got to shake his hand, and it was just so amazing. ... I want to say thank you so much. There are no words to describe my joy. There's just none.

The students of Lake Area Technical Institute also got a pretty great deal out of this, of course — a commencement address from a sitting president is quite a boon, and obviously that's the real reason he was in the state. But even though that's a honor many of those stundents probably never envisioned, I bet you'd be hard pressed to find any of them as genuinely excited as Kelley was.