John McCain unveiled a TV ad yesterday that uses hippie scenes from the 1969 Woodstock festival to blast Hillary Rodham Clinton for trying to steer $1 million in federal funds to a concert museum on the site.
The 30-second spot, airing in New Hampshire, opens with a kaleidoscope of tie-dye colors and psychedelic music.
The ad replays a tape from Sunday’s Republican debate in Florida, with McCain, a Vietnam POW during Woodstock, railing against pork-barrel spending.
“A few days ago, Senator Clinton tried to spend $1 million on the Woodstock Concert Museum. Now, my friends, I wasn’t there. I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event,” McCain said to guffaws.
The video even shows GOP rival Rudy Giuliani chuckling and applauding onstage.
The ad then cuts to grainy footage of a badly injured and captive McCain in a North Vietnam hospital in 1969 after his fighter plane was shot down.
“I was tied up at the time,” McCain quips at the debate.
Clinton and fellow New York Sen. Chuck Schumer defended the Woodstock museum as an economic boost to the Hudson Valley.
A Clinton spokesman said, “Senator McCain should focus more on explaining to voters why he supported the fiscally irresponsible Bush policies that squandered a federal surplus and left us with the largest deficit in American history.”