WASHINGTON — Standing wordlessly before a flickering flame, their faces etched in the sunlight slanting through a canopy of thinning trees, two Democratic presidents came together on Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the memory of a third.
President Obama and former president Bill Clinton walked up a hillside to the grave of John F. Kennedy, where, joined by Michelle Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, they laid a wreath to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s death by an assassin’s bullet.
A military bugler called out taps, the mournful notes resounding on a crisp, clear autumn day that seemed a softer echo of the stark grandeur of the state funeral on Nov. 25, 1963.
It was the emotional highlight of a day laden with symbolism, uniting Democratic presidents past, present, and possibly future, to pay tribute to a beloved predecessor, a leader whose legacy and family played a formative role in the lives of Obama and Clinton.
The president and the former president escorted Ethel Kennedy to the gravesite. Later, they mingled with members of the Kennedy family. In timing that scarcely seemed accidental, Caroline Kennedy, who recently took up her post as Obama’s ambassador to Japan, had left for Tokyo only days before this week’s milestone.
Earlier Wednesday at the White House, Obama had bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom — conceived by Kennedy a half-century ago as the nation’s highest civilian honor — on Clinton and 15 other luminaries from the worlds of sports, politics, journalism, and academia.
Under the twinkling chandeliers of the East Room, Obama paid tribute to Clinton for his achievements as governor of Arkansas, as the 42d president, and as the founder of the Clinton Foundation, which Obama said had saved millions of lives.
“Lifting up families like his own became the story of Bill Clinton’s life,” the president said, as Hillary Clinton sat in the front row of the audience. “He wanted to make sure he made life better and easier for so many people across the country.”
Obama’s remarks were a graceful acknowledgment of Bill Clinton’s record, but they came with a sly wink at the complexities of a relationship between the president and his opinionated predecessor.
“I’m grateful, Bill, as well, for the advice you’ve offered me, on and off the golf course,” Obama said, alluding, perhaps, to a recent report that the president chafed at his chatty golf companion and told his aides that he liked Clinton only “in doses.”
As Obama struggles through one of the bleaker stretches of his presidency, Clinton has again taken on the role of critic, urging the president to fix the health care law to honor his pledge that, if people like their health insurance, they should be allowed to keep it.
He has also criticized Obama’s Syria policy, saying that any president would be a “total fool” to avoid taking action to stem a brutal civil war because of public resistance to foreign engagement.
The White House insists that it welcomes Clinton’s advice on health care, although some political analysts have speculated that he is distancing himself and his wife from an increasingly unpopular health care law, before Hillary Rodham Clinton runs for president in 2016.
Obama alluded to Hillary Rodham Clinton only indirectly, thanking Bill Clinton for having patience “during the endless travels of my secretary of state.”
In the East Room, the president also saluted two members of the Kennedy clan: Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy, and Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of John F. Kennedy and son of Caroline Kennedy.
Among those on an unusually star-studded list of 16 recipients for the Presidential Medal of Freedom were Oprah Winfrey, the television entrepreneur; Dean Smith, the Hall of Fame college basketball coach; Bayard Rustin, the civil rights campaigner; Sally Ride, the late astronaut who was the first US woman in space; Benjamin C. Bradlee, the Watergate-era editor of The Washington Post; Daniel K. Inouye, the late senator from Hawaii; Loretta Lynn, the country music singer; and Gloria Steinem, the feminist writer.
After praising Bradlee for his transformation of the Post into a leading newspaper and his role in nurturing a generation of investigative journalists after the Watergate scandal, the president could not resist a reference to the editor’s bespoke, bold-striped shirts.
“He can pull off those shirts, and I can’t,” Obama said to chuckles. “He always looks so cool in them.”