Wednesday, 20 November 2013
Obama, Clinton unite at JFK's grave
Obama, Clinton unite at JFK's grave
By Stephen Collinson 5 hours ago
Washington (AFP) - A pair
of Democratic presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton silently
honored John F. Kennedy at the former US leader's grave Wednesday,
marking the 50th anniversary of his assassination.
Obama and Clinton, along with First Lady Michelle
Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, laid a large blue
and white wreath on the sun-dappled grave of JFK, who was gunned down in
Dallas on November 22, 1963.
They then stood together, with hands
on hearts, as a bugler played the US military lament "Taps" before
observing a moment of silence.
Extended members of the Kennedy clan looked on at the tableau of presidential power -- past, present, and possibly future.
The
observance came after Obama awarded Bill Clinton and 15 other
luminaries of the arts, sport, science and innovation the highest honor
for US civilians, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was first
minted by Kennedy.
Later Wednesday, Obama will pay tribute to
Kennedy's legacy at a speech at the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington honoring medal awardees.
The Kennedy grave and eternal
flame is in Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington on a hillside
with a paved area fashioned from Cape Cod granite quarried from near
the Kennedy clan's home base in Massachusetts.
The eternal flame
was lit by Kennedy's wife Jacqueline Kennedy during his funeral in 1963
and she was buried beside her husband after her own death in 1994.
The
poignant moment of remembrance came two days before the official
half-century anniversary of the death of Kennedy, who was gunned down in
an open-top limousine in Dallas, Texas, in a crime which traumatized
the world.
The ceremonies have sparked a prolonged period of
national and media reflection on the unfinished legacy of Kennedy, his
tragedy-crossed family and of the evocative period in the early 1960s
when his political star illuminated the world.
Kennedy's closest
living relative, his daughter Caroline, however, was not at Wednesday's
ceremony. An early supporter of Obama's presidential ambitions, she has
just set off on a new chapter of her life as the US ambassador to Tokyo.
The
joint Obama-Clinton appearance at the grave site represented the latest
show of unity between two political power families who waged a bitter
2008 Democratic presidential nominating duel.
Hillary Clinton is
now the red-hot favorite to land the Democratic nomination for the 2016
election -- but has not said whether she will make another run for the
White House.
Presidents Clinton and Obama, two-term leaders both, laid claim to the legacy of John F. Kennedy in their own White House runs.
Clinton
was famously pictured meeting Kennedy at an event in the White House
Rose Garden in July 1963, and has reminisced about how he set eyes on
the presidency himself after shaking JFK's hand.
Obama, who was
two years old when the 35th US president was killed, accepted Kennedy's
torch of Democratic Party idealism in a key moment in the 2008 campaign
-- which irked the Clintons -- when president Kennedy's late brother,
senator Edward Kennedy endorsed Obama at American University in
Washington.
The two presidents stood together at a painful
political moment for Obama, when he may be looking for political
inspiration, after being brought low by the botched implementation of
his signature health care law.
A CBS News poll published Wednesday found that the president's approval rating was down to 37 percent -- his lowest ever.
In
the Medal of Freedom ceremony, Obama said that Clinton's presidency
proved that it was possible to grow the economy, cut the deficit and
invest in science, technology and education -- remarks which mirrored
his own core political argument to American voters.
Kennedy's killing was blamed on a gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was said to be acting alone.
But
the 50 years since have been replete with conspiracy theories centering
on whether Oswald was the true culprit and if he was acting on his own
initiative or was part of a wider plot.
