Hillary Clinton and 1968

From what I know about 1968, I can't imagine having been involved in both Democratic and Republican politics. It turns out that it wasn't much of a problem for Hillary Clinton though (and it hasn't seemed like much of a problem for her in 2008 either, I might add). The more you learn, the stranger it gets:

[Hillary Clinton] might have been the only 20-year-old in America who worked on the antiwar presidential campaign of Senator Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire that winter and for the hawkish Republican congressman Melvin Laird in Washington that summer.

The passage comes from a September 2007 NYT profile of Clinton's 1968. (In light of her claim to have found her voice after winning New Hampshire, its title is pretty funny:  "In Turmoil of ’68, Clinton Found a New Voice.")

For all her leftward movement, Ms. Rodham still kept a toe in the Republican Party, working as an intern in Washington that summer. Mr. Schechter, who supervised the Wellesley internship program, sent her to work for the House Republican Conference, then headed by Mr. Laird, the Wisconsin congressman who would later become President Richard Nixon’s defense secretary. ... At the end of the internship, Ms. Rodham proudly posed for a photo with House Republican leaders, including Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan. The photo hung in her father’s bedroom when he died in 1993.  

According to the profile, Clinton also attended the 1968 Republican National Convention as a supporter of Nelson Rockefeller, and watched Richard Nixon's acceptance speech from the floor, which she now says ended her commitment to the Republican Party.

Another interesting note: although she didn't participate in the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, she did witness the riots there, making her RFK comment all the more bizarre -- she saw with her own eyes that 1968 is a horrible example of party unity.