Top Officals Join Crowds at Clinton Library Opening

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Former President Clinton opened the doors of the nation’s 12th presidential library today, dedicating a $165-million institute that delves into a dynamic era while dabbling in the scandal that nearly brought him down.

The William J. Clinton Presidential Center, a glass-encased, modernist design that plays off Clinton’s metaphor of building a “bridge to the 21st century,” is expected to draw 300,000 people a year and provide an important cultural addition to the mid-South. It opens to the public Friday morning.

Visitors will find a monument to Clinton himself, of course, but also to the eight years he occupied the White House — a time of political rancor at home and strife overseas, of a bomb in Oklahoma City and fighter jets over Sarajevo, of Jon Benet and O.J., of Teletubbies and the Hubble Telescope.

When Clinton was elected in 1992, the United States, he said, was still emerging from the Cold War, was embracing its blossoming diversity and was moving into an information economy. He said he was drawn to both strains of American politics, to conservatism when it meant increasing the military’s might and fighting crime, and to progressivism when it meant improving public schools and creating jobs.

“When I became president, the world was a new and different place,” he said on a dank and soggy day, with President Bush, Bush’s father and former President Carter on the stage with him. “The whole story is here.”

For political junkies, it was a day of intrigue.

Among the 100 members of Congress in the audience was Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry, just two weeks removed from the presidential race. The crowd, which had been bullied into silence by the weather, erupted in an enormous cheer when Kerry’s arrival was shown on large video screens hanging above the bleachers from cranes. Here, too, was former Vice President Al Gore, who, some still argue, deserved to take over the White House in 2000.

Seated nearby were conservatives such as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, and Karl Rove, the White House advisor who engineered Bush’s reelection drive this fall.

On stage, even after a divisive political season, the current and former presidents set aside their partisan differences, a reminder that the institution of the presidency will always trump the person who holds the office.

Clinton said he often joked during the recent campaign, wondering whether he was the only person left in America who liked both President Bush and Kerry, men who had competing visions for the country.

Carter said it was “valuable for the world to see two Democrats and two Republicans together, all honoring a great country.”

The Bushes, for years the entrenched political foils of the Clintons and their followers, offered gracious testimonies to Clinton and his presidency.

George Herbert Walker Bush called the library a “gift to the future by a man who always believed in America.” Noting Clinton’s humble beginnings on Harvey Street in Hope, Ark., Bush said Clinton’s presidency remains an inspirational story and called Clinton one of the most gifted politicians in modern history.

“I learned this the hard way,” he said with a laugh, referring to the 1992 campaign, when he lost his bid for reelection to the then-Arkansas governor. “He made it look too easy. And, oh, how I hated him for that.”

President Bush called Clinton “an innovator, a serious student of policy and a man of great compassion.” Echoing his father’s appreciation of Clinton’s prowess on the stump, he told the story of a voter who was once asked why he liked Clinton. The voter, Bush said, replied that Clinton could “look you in the eye, shake your hand, hold your baby and pet your dog — all at once.”

“President Bill Clinton led our country with optimism and a great affection for the American people,” Bush said. “And that affection has been returned.”

The current and former White House occupants and other politicians were joined by rock and film stars and an estimated 30,000 others who stood in a steady rain under tan, black, red and blue umbrellas and wearing rain ponchos.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said the museum “is like my husband. It’s open, it’s expansive, it’s welcome, it’s filled with life.”

In his speech, Bill Clinton, still recovering from cardiac surgery in September, talked of his work toward peace in the Middle East, including one year in which “not one person died of a terrorist attack.”

“I tried so hard for peace in the Middle East,” he said. “I did all I could.” And he asked that President Bush continue the work.

“And so, Mr. President, I hope you get to cross over into the promised land of Middle East peace. We have a good opportunity and we are all praying for you.”

Bono and the Edge of the rock group U2 played songs including, “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” about an incident when the British fired upon Irish demonstrators. The Irish peace pact is a part of the Clinton legacy.

Times staff writer Mary MacVean and Associated Press contributed to this report.