The Fourth of July holiday brings many newspaper columns waxing on the greatness of this nation. No one can top Dinah Shore singing, "See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet . . . America's the greatest land of all."

So instead, I shall exercise those God-given rights that make this nation great. Too many people sacrificed to protect those rights for me not to use them.

Republican Sen. John McCain served more than five years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi. It was a terrible ordeal that cost him his shot at admiral, a rank both his grandfather and his father earned.

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama is taking a cue from Democratic Sen. John Rockefeller by dumping on his opponent's sacrifices.

Not directly, but through surrogates.

This tactic was test-marketed in West Virginia.

In an interview with the Gazette, Rockefeller said:

"He's a fighter pilot. He flies at 35,000 feet and drops laser-guided bombs, missiles. He was long gone when they hit. What happened down there, he doesn't know. That's unkind, because that's fighting for your nation and that's honorable. But you sort of have to care what goes on in the lives of people."

After McCain's people called Rockefeller on it, the senator retracted his statement.

McCain has been back to Vietnam many times. The McCains adopted a young girl with a cleft palate after visiting Mother Teresa.

By the way, he did not fire laser-guided missiles either.

Then there is Tom Hayden, who rose to power in California Democratic Party politics by marrying Jane Fonda and opposing the Vietnam War.

Fonda visited Hanoi while McCain was there. She actually stayed in a hotel rather than the sarcastically named "Hanoi Hilton."

In an e-mail to Ben Smith at Politico, Hayden wrote:

The Fourth of July holiday brings many newspaper columns waxing on the greatness of this nation. No one can top Dinah Shore singing, "See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet . . . America's the greatest land of all."

So instead, I shall exercise those God-given rights that make this nation great. Too many people sacrificed to protect those rights for me not to use them.

Republican Sen. John McCain served more than five years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi. It was a terrible ordeal that cost him his shot at admiral, a rank both his grandfather and his father earned.

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama is taking a cue from Democratic Sen. John Rockefeller by dumping on his opponent's sacrifices.

Not directly, but through surrogates.

This tactic was test-marketed in West Virginia.

In an interview with the Gazette, Rockefeller said:

"He's a fighter pilot. He flies at 35,000 feet and drops laser-guided bombs, missiles. He was long gone when they hit. What happened down there, he doesn't know. That's unkind, because that's fighting for your nation and that's honorable. But you sort of have to care what goes on in the lives of people."

After McCain's people called Rockefeller on it, the senator retracted his statement.

McCain has been back to Vietnam many times. The McCains adopted a young girl with a cleft palate after visiting Mother Teresa.

By the way, he did not fire laser-guided missiles either.

Then there is Tom Hayden, who rose to power in California Democratic Party politics by marrying Jane Fonda and opposing the Vietnam War.

Fonda visited Hanoi while McCain was there. She actually stayed in a hotel rather than the sarcastically named "Hanoi Hilton."

In an e-mail to Ben Smith at Politico, Hayden wrote:

"I know and like McCain. From my own perspective and that of many anti-war activists of that era, the fact that he bombed North Vietnam some 25 times, probably killing civilians, gets blurred with the facts that he suffered through that long prison ordeal, then also went on to promote diplomatic relations between the two countries."

Hayden and Fonda didn't spend much time helping the Vietnamese rebuild after the war. The compassion of some people ends when the cameras stop rolling.

To be sure, Republicans went after Democratic Sen. John Kerry's war record. But these attacks were from Vietnam War veterans who took exception to Kerry's testimony to a congressional committee about "war crimes."

Billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who helped fund the Swift Boat ads, offered Kerry $1 million if he could prove that anything in those ads was untrue.

Kerry has yet to collect.

The ads came after Kerry threw away his medals. Kerry, 33 years later, said he threw someone else's ribbons away. Knowing Kerry, that likely is true.

Obama has settled on Gen. Wesley Clark as his surrogate in dumping on McCain's military service. Clark refined Rockefeller's earlier remark.

"I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president," Clark said on his appearance on the CBS News Sunday show.

In Cincinnati, earlier this year, the McCain campaign hired a local talk radio host to introduce McCain at a rally. The talk guy called McCain's opponent by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama.

McCain immediately took the stage and denounced that.

Obama has yet to denounce Rockefeller, Hayden or Clark.

Yes, America is a great country, the greatest land of all. It is a country without hate speech laws, where people can say whatever they want about their leaders without fear of retribution from the government.

But voters? That's a whole 'nother matter.

Surber may be reached at donsur...@dailymail.com. His blog is at blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber.