McCain reprises debate high point in new ad

It was the biggest applause line at Sunday night's Republican presidential debate. And now it's the subject of John McCain's latest TV ad in New Hampshire.

The Arizona senator, joining in the pillorying of Hillary Clinton, mocked her support for a $1 million federal grant for a museum commemorating Woodstock, the music festival that became a signpost of 1960s counterculture.

The ad shows him saying, "Now my friends, I wasn't there. I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event," as rival Rudy Giuliani guffaws and the audience in Florida rises to its feet.

Then, the punch line, "I was tied up at the time," as the ad shows him in a bed at the Hanoi Hilton as a prisoner of war during Vietnam.

So in a neat rhetorical trick, McCain managed to remind viewers that he is the only leading Republican candidate who served in the military, and at the same time tar Clinton as purportedly another tax-and-spend Democrat.

The ad ends with McCain saying, "No one can be president of the United States that supports projects such as these."