LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Former President Bill Clinton basked in the applause of friends and former foes Thursday – including the exclusive fraternity of American presidents – as they gathered to help him open his presidential library and museum.

Clinton was saluted by President Bush as well as former presidents George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. Of the living former presidents, only Gerald Ford, who is 91 years old, didn’t attend.

An estimated 30,000 guests were on hand for the dedication of the $165 million glass-and-steel home of artifacts and documents gathered during Clinton’s eight years in the White House.

The rare gathering of presidents underscored the bipartisan nature of the celebration just weeks after a close and at times bitter national election. All gracious, they saluted not just Clinton but one another for their service and their accomplishments.

“President Bill Clinton led our country with optimism and a great affection for the American people, and that affection has been returned,” the current President Bush told the crowd, which braved a steady rain outside the museum.

Bush lauded the political skill of the man who defeated his father. He prompted laughter by recalling how an Arkansas voter once observed that Clinton will “look you in the eye, he’ll shake your hand, he’ll hold your baby, he’ll pet your dog – all at the same time.”

He also paid homage to Clinton’s “brilliance and his mastery of detail” as well as his empathy for the needy.

“He was a tireless champion of peace in the Middle East. He used American power in the Balkans to confront aggression and halt ethnic cleansing. And in all his actions and decisions, the American people sensed a deep empathy for the poor and the powerless,” Bush said.

The elder Bush, 80, was expansive, making light of his own performance in debates with Clinton and crediting Clinton with being a skillful politician and a persistent leader.

He said Clinton “enjoyed debates too much for my taste” and jokingly confirmed a widely held suspicion that he was anxious to get out of a debate with Clinton and third-party candidate H. Ross Perot when he was caught on camera looking at his watch.

“To be very frank with you, I hated debates,” he said, again to laughs. “And when I checked my watch at the Richmond debate, it’s true, I was wondering when the heck Ross Perot would be finished and how I can get out of there.”

Though Clinton defeated him, Bush said they are drawn together by the fact that they shared the highest public office in the land.

“After you leave the White House, a number of things happen to you,” Bush said. “One of the great blessings is the way one-time political adversaries have the tendency to become friends, and I feel such is certainly the case between President Clinton and me.”

Carter, 80, echoed the sentiment.

“There is a special time that binds those of us together who have lived and served in the White House and then moved on to other things, retired either as required by the Constitution or involuntarily as a result of elections,” Carter told the audience.

U2’s Bono and The Edge played the Beatles song “Rain,” before Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton introduced her husband in remarks cut short by the weather.

Clinton used his remarks to remind the audience – particularly the Democratic Party as it searches for a path back to victory- that he succeeded by blending elements of the country’s major political philosophies.

“America has two great dominant strands of political thought … conservatism, which at its very best draws lines that should not be crossed, and progressivism, which at its very best breaks down barriers that are no longer needed or should never have been erected in the first place,” he said.

The nation’s 42nd president told the crowd, “I believe the job of a president is to understand and explain the time in which he serves, to set forth a vision of where we need to go and a strategy of how to get there, and then to pursue it with all his mind and heart.”

He paid tribute to the people of Arkansas, his family, his predecessors and his colleagues, and he said he tried to combine the best of conservatism, maintaining what is worth keeping, and progressivism, discarding what is not.

He said he was disappointed by the divisions revealed in the just-ended presidential campaign, wondering if he was the only American who liked both candidates.

“We all do better when we work together,” he said. “Our differences do matter, but our common humanity matters more.”