Groovy

I'm with Digby on this. Not only has McCain made the contrast between his years in captivity and...I dunno...free love... a central tenet of his campaign, it's the only tenet*.

ACCURACY Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, at whom this spot takes veiled swipes, was turning 6 years old during the “summer of love,” and cannot be counted as among those who protested or indulged while Mr. McCain suffered (unless playing with building blocks counts). Mr. McCain’s military service and the torture he endured in Vietnam are well established. Mr. McCain did indeed buck his party’s leadership in helping to draft new campaign finance regulations, though he and his supporters are now being accused of exploiting loopholes to compete with Mr. Obama, who has opted out of the campaign finance system. His moves against Congressional earmarks and wasteful government spending are well known. But Mr. McCain has more recently found new areas of agreement with President Bush and other party leaders, like pledging to make permanent the tax cuts he twice voted against and lifting a ban against offshore drilling that he once supported.

However, we can not question whether getting shot down is a qualification for president. That would be mean.

But the larger question is, will fighting the battles of the 1960s still resonate with undecided voters. Perhaps so; perhaps revulsion with the DFHs, the Panthers, and feminists burning their bras is still powerful. Or perhaps most people will just say, "WTF?"

The results of Nixonland are still with us. But the battles and events that led to our polarization are now so remote as to barely be remembered, if the voter was even born then. So, like Obama, they were unAmerican enough to have failed to be old enough to have been in Vietnam.

Or Woodstock.



* Oh, and fear.