A Date To Remember For Clinton And McCain

washingtonpost.com: Clinton's 60th Birthday Is 40th Anniversary Of Day McCain Was Shot Down Over Vietnam

(Washingtonpost.com)  This story was written by Dan Balz in washingtonpost.com's blog The Trail.

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They are the Sixties bookends of the 2008 campaign, one a college protester during Vietnam, the other a decorated naval officer who flew combat missions in the skies over Hanoi. On Friday, their biographies intersect in a powerful evocation of a decade that long has shaped the politics of the country.

It is an accident of history that Hillary Clinton's 60th birthday falls on the 40th anniversary of the day John McCain was shot down over Vietnam. Today they campaign for the White House as respectful rivals but across a vast cultural chasm that still divides the country.

It is ironic perhaps that their shared anniversaries come at the end of a week in which McCain has tweaked Clinton over one of the great symbols of that decade, the Woodstock rock concert in upstate New York, which McCain described in last Sunday's debate as a "cultural and pharmaceutical event" that he missed because he "was tied up." Clinton's support for $1 million in taxpayer dollars to help fund a Woodstock memorial is the subject of McCain's new campaign ad.

Baby Boomer Clinton will mark her big birthday with a big celebration, a fundraising bash Thursday night featuring rocker Elvis Costello that will include friends and political contributors and will be hosted by her husband.

McCain, more than a decade older and therefore not sharing the sensibilities of the Boomer generation, will not celebrate as much as commemorate the anniversary of his capture. He plans to campaign Friday in Iowa with Bud Day, with whom he shared a prison cell at the Hanoi Hilton.

McCain's life was forever shaped by Oct. 26, 1967 and the subsequent six years he spent as a prisoner of war. He still carries the physical scars from his torture and exudes the indomitable spirit that kept him alive. So too was Clinton's life changed by those years. She was 20 at the time and in midstream of a political evolution that would take her from Goldwater Girl to liberal activist to the most prominent woman in the Democratic Party.

When McCain was finally released from prison in the spring of 1973, he met President Nixon at a White House reception for the POWs, resulting in a famous photo of their handshake. By the end of that year, Clinton, then a young law school graduate, had been recruited to join the staff of the House Judiciary Committee for its Watergate impeachment investigation.

To many Republicans, Clinton and her husband remain symbols of all that was wrong with the Sixties. One need only to recall the speech Marilyn Quayle delivered at the 1992 Republican convention in Houston. "Not everyone demonstrated, dropped out, took drugs, joined in the sexual revolution or dodged the draft," she told her Astrodome audience that week.

McCain has never engaged in such rhetoric. When it comes to Vietnam, he has sought to be a conciliator. He developed genuine friendships with some of the fiercest opponents of the war and pushed for normalization of relations with Vietnam at a time when many conservatives were opposed. He gave aid and comfort to President Bill Clinton on that issue during Clinton's presidency.

Today he says of Hillary Clinton, "I like her. I respect her." He also says she is a liberal and he a proud conservative.

As fellow senators, McCain and Clinton have traveled overseas together, once sharing a bottle of vodka with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina in a memorable night of senatorial camaraderie that seemed to cut against all the stereotypes. Their trips included one to Iraq.

At one time, they even came close to seeing eye-to-eye on Iraq, this being when both were critics of the administration's management of the conflict and of then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Today they are as divided over Iraq as they once were over Vietnam, only now it comes in the context of a high-stakes presidential campaign.

As Clinton shifted left to accommodate the views of her party's base and embraced the politics of withdrawal, McCain dug in as the most visible supporter of sending more troops into Baghdad and elsewhere. They are poles apart over what may be the most important foreign policy issue of the campaign.

They began the 2008 campaign being viewed as likely rivals in the general election. McCain's star has since faded as Clinton's has burned brighter. That they could yet end up in direct competition for the White House is of course possible, but fewer envision that today than did 10 months ago.

What kind of campaign would that be? I asked McCain that the other day. "I hope it would sound like a respectable debate based on philosophical differences, which are significant," he said. "For example, she voted to cut off funding to the troops in Iraq after it was clear we were going to stay. I think that that's something that ought to be debated. I think that her view of mandates for health care as opposed to mine is a issue that ought to be debated."

Clinton and McCain may never share that presidential campaign platform, never meet in a general election debate. But on Friday their names will be intertwined in the headlines and in the chatter of talk television, two veterans of the cultural and political clashes of the Sixties now symbols in their own right seeking to lead a still-divided nation.

[speakinup]

Signof4 - whats the story behind $850k and Hillary ?

[chucktruck2]

Huck ''s band drove to the event ...... true ghost story

[chucktruck2]

Esoteric...ALERT Hillary''s birthday Woodstock music and Huckabee playing music at the place at Buddy''s last appearance,the night he died on the same evening..............Hillary//Huck ...ticket ...matching...........COLLECTIVISM.......with..music

[s35wf]

END THE IRAQ WAR, END THE DRUG WAR, END THE TAX WAR!

VOTE RON PAUL 2008!

[likeitis5050]

The sub-conscious inference is that she likes to have fun-- and he is serious. goldesprit

psycho babble aside...Hillary and ''fun'' go together like lead paint and teething babies.

[wonder25]

"It is an accident of history that Hillary Clinton''''s 60th birthday falls on the 40th anniversary of the day John McCain was shot down over Vietnam."

It couldn''t be the other way around--she was a ''snivelling civi'' who loathed the military then, and now. Tell you what--go to my web site and I''ll arrange my played to put up the Hillary song second. (First you have to hear my Al Gore tune ''Hot Air.'')

Oh, and spare me the ''neocon''insults that you all learned in your jr. college poly sci classes--I am a neocon...I embrace my inner neocon. Hear it in song-
where? www.

conservativemusiconline.com

[goldesprit]

(Washingtonpost.com) This story was written by Dan Balz in washingtonpost.com''s blog The Trail.

In my last post (below) I forgot to mention that CBS has the usual excuse--(we''re just repeating what someone else said")just like they do on TV when they say they asked a Candidate a question "from an email" -- when they have searched fo a specific email with a question they already wanted to ask...

[goldesprit]

"It is an accident of history that Hillary Clinton''s 60th birthday falls on the 40th anniversary of the day John McCain was shot down over Vietnam."

No it is a hand picked coincidence. Most home computers can find these kind of so called similarities, of course.

In this "article", we essentially see a Hillary Clinton next to the word "birthday", smiling.

Then by "accident" we see a McCain photo next to the buzz words "prisoner of war".

The sub-conscious inference is that she likes to have fun-- and he is serious.

An idotic concept for the excuse for a slanted article.

While CBS as a whole may have integrity on average-- there can be moles with an agenda.

Think about that in future when you end up reading something like this...

[signof4]

Hey, Hillary......did you give back the $850K yet? Didn''t think so. You are a liar and a thief. Have a wonderful birthday, beotch!

[valendug]

Just what intelligence information did McCain give to his captors to save his own life while his fellow POW''s were killed for not giving that same information? Why is he still alive and his compatriots killed by the enemy? I don''t trust McCain and he needs to come clean after all these years.