Mr. Obama, on his first trip to Oregon before the state’s primary on May 20, did not address the comments from Mr. Clinton. He stood a few feet away from the retired general as he made his remarks before a crowd of more than 1,500 people in a Medford community center.

“I’m saddened to see a president employ this kind of tactics,” said General McPeak, who served as Air Force chief of staff in the early years of the Clinton administration. “He of all people should know better because he was the target of exactly the same kind of tactic when he first ran 16 years ago.”

Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, on Saturday called the retired general’s comments a “deliberately pathetic misreading of what the president said.” Wolfson said the remarks had nothing to do with Obama and were merely meant to underscore the need to keep the presidential race focused on issues.

“I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country,” Mr. Clinton told the group in Charlotte, N.C., according to a report by NBC News. “And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.”

In response to reporters in Oregon on Friday, General McPeak compared Mr. Clinton to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, who aggressively pursued those he believed to be communists in the 1950s. “I was going to college when Joe McCarthy was accusing good Americans of being traitors, so I’ve had enough of it,” General McPeak said.