In an interview with men's magazine Playboy released on Friday, the 27-year-old McCain admits to being paranoid about her image when wearing low-cut dresses but says she likes to show cleavage.

She insists she is not lesbian, as some have speculated, but says she might have an easier time in life if she were. McCain reserves her most withering criticism for President Barack Obama and the current Republican primary race, but says talk of politics on a date is boring.

As a sometime darling of the paparazzi, McCain has been the most high-profile child of U.S. Senator John McCain since the Arizona Republican's failed bid for president.

Since then, she has become a political pundit on TV and shows no sign of shying from the spotlight -- or holding her tongue. She would have been inescapable if her father had won, in her estimation.

"You would have the craziest first daughter ever, who'd be making ridiculous headlines and hurting the administration every step of the way," McCain told Playboy, in an interview that ranged from her love of shotguns to her admiration for the late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

In 2009, McCain and racy reality TV star Tila Tequila were often photographed hanging out together. Their friendship earned McCain plenty of attention, and she admits to some qualms about partying in public.

"I do get paranoid, when I'm wearing low-cut dresses, that somebody's going to take a picture and put it on the Internet and be like, 'Meghan was showing off her breasts again,'" McCain told Playboy.

"But you know, showing a little cleavage can make a girl feel sexy too," she said.

In response to a question asking her to clarify a comment about hanging out in bed with her girlfriends to cope with her father's 2008 loss, McCain was direct. "I'm not a lesbian, if that's what you're asking," she said.

"I've been hit on by women from time to time, and it might simplify my life if I were gay, but no," she said.

McCain took aim at President Obama, arguing that "morale in the military and in the country at large would be higher" if her father had won the White House.

As for the current Republican primary race and its contenders, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, she asked rhetorically, "Where's the electricity?"

Still, McCain considers talk of politics on a date a turn-off. "I'm obsessed with this stuff, but it doesn't put me in the mood," she said.

And she spoke highly of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" author Hunter S. Thompson, who killed himself in 2005. She described Thompson as someone who liked drinking whiskey and shooting guns. "I appreciate both those things," she said. "We would have understood each other."

The interview with McCain appears in the April issue of Playboy which hit newsstands on Friday.

(Reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

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