PROFILE:She grew up in the White House, protected from the limelight. But suddenly Chelsea Clinton is out on the hustings defending her mother, now that Barack Obama's appeal has grown among young voters, writes Denis Staunton.
IT WAS A CHILLY Sunday morning in February, and the campus of the University of Maryland was almost deserted, but a couple of hundred people had crowded into the basement of the student centre to hear Chelsea Clinton speak about the US presidential election.
"I'm here to answer whatever questions you might have about my mom and her policies, her plans, why I believe in her so strongly, as a young American, as a young woman," Clinton told the mostly white, predominantly female crowd. "If I don't know the answer to your question, I'll tell you."
For the next hour, however, she was seldom at a loss as she spoke in fluent detail about healthcare reform, tax policy, veterans' benefits, the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, economic relations with China and the war in Iraq. The 27-year-old was confident and poised throughout, tall and trim with luxuriant, shoulder-length blond hair, dressed neatly in black pants and a fitted tweed jacket.
For most of the audience the most novel aspect of Clinton's performance was not what she said but the fact that they were hearing her voice at all, after a lifetime of watching her as an intimately familiar but silent figure on the public stage. When she first appeared at the side of her mother, Hillary, on the campaign trail, in Iowa late last year, Clinton would stand and wave at the start of each event but say nothing. Later she would exchange only the briefest of pleasantries with supporters as she shook hands along the rope line.
In recent weeks, as her mother's campaign watched Barack Obama's appeal grow, especially among young voters, Clinton has moved farther into the spotlight, making dozens of appearances like the one in Maryland and representing her mother as the campaign's chief surrogate in Hawaii, where she wore a floral wreath and danced a hula.
"She's a very private person, and I don't think she planned on being out there doing anything," says Elizabeth Bagley, a prodigious Democratic fundraiser and activist and a long-standing friend of the Clintons who served as US ambassador to Portugal during the 1990s. "But, as she got more comfortable, people asked her to start speaking out, especially young people. I think she was reluctant initially to speak before large crowds, but she's gotten increasingly more comfortable, and her grasp of the issues is just astounding."
Clinton may be more willing than before to speak in public, but she still adamantly refuses to talk to journalists, as nine-year-old Sydney Rieckhoff discovered in Iowa a few weeks ago. The fourth-grader told Clinton that she was writing an article for her school newspaper and asked: "Do you think your dad would be a good First Man in the White House?" Clinton was having none of it. "I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press - and that applies to you, unfortunately. Even though I think you're cute," she said, according to the Associated Press.
Clinton's suspicion of the media may have been reinforced a week before the Maryland event, when a reporter from MSNBC named David Shuster was suspended for comments he made about her role in lobbying Democratic delegates to support her mother. "Doesn't it seem like Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" Shuster asked.
Howard Wolfson, the Clinton campaign's communications director, called Shuster's remark "disgusting", "beneath contempt" and "the kind of thing that should never be said on a national news network"; Hillary threatened to boycott an MSNBC presidential debate. "I am a mom first and a candidate second, and I found the remark incredibly offensive," she wrote to the network's bosses.
FROM THE MOMENT Clinton arrived at the White House, at the age of 12, her parents sought to protect her from press attention and to allow her to have as normal an adolescence as possible. She attended Sidwell Friends School, a smart Quaker day school in Washington, DC, that attracts many politicians' children, and she became an accomplished dancer, training at the Washington School of Ballet in 1993.
Elizabeth Bagley recalls that, as a teenager, Chelsea was unusually polite, retaining much of the old-fashioned manner she brought with her from Little Rock. "When she first came to Portugal with her mother, I think she was 16, and they stayed with us for about five days. It was 'Yes, ma'am, no, ma'am'. Very Southern, actually, growing up in Arkansas," she says.
Clinton's youth and sweet nature did little to protect her, however, from conservative talkshow hosts, comedians and even some politicians, who poked fun at her gawky teenage looks. When she was 13 Rush Limbaugh put up a picture of Socks, the White House cat, on his television show and asked: "Did you know there's a White House dog?" Then he put up a picture of Clinton. A few years later John McCain, who is now the Republican presidential front runner, made an even more offensive joke at a party fundraiser. "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno," he said, referring to President Clinton's attorney general.
Throughout the late 1990s, as the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Bill Clinton's impeachment dominated the news, Chelsea couldn't avoid hearing the most lurid stories and allegations about her father's infidelity. "Anyone would have felt it, and she didn't have anyone to talk to about it, because she's an only child, which makes it even more difficult to have to hear things about her parents that she wouldn't want to hear, that no child wants to hear," Bagley says. "I think they've always taught her to just ignore that kind of thing, that it's all politics and it happens. But it had to be difficult."
The public scrutiny of her family had little impact on Clinton's performance at school, and she was accepted at Harvard, Yale and Princeton before choosing Stanford. She studied chemistry at first, then considered medicine before switching to history, writing her undergraduate thesis on the American role in the Northern Ireland peace process, a 167-page dissertation that includes a lengthy interview with her father.
Despite the constant presence of Secret Service agents, Clinton settled into normal student life at Stanford, where the authorities worked hard to protect her from prying reporters.
After graduation she spent a year at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, studying international relations. It was during her time in Britain that she shook off her adolescent look and sampled the more glamorous side of celebrity life, watching a Versace show in Paris with Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow and attending parties given by Elton John and Oscar de la Renta.
When she returned to the US, in 2003, Clinton moved to New York, where she was hired by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and settled in Chelsea, the district that inspired Joni Mitchell's song Chelsea Morning, after which her parents named her. At first the tabloids trailed her every move, but they soon lost interest as it became apparent that Clinton was too cool and well disciplined to make headlines. In 2006 she left McKinsey for a hedge fund run by Marc Lasry, a Democratic donor and supporter of her parents.
AS SHE DISCUSSED healthcare with the Maryland students, Clinton told them that, like many Americans, she was unhappy with the health insurance provided by her job. "I think if I say that enough it will filter back to my employer," she said. Later a female student told Clinton that she was "awesome" and read a limerick she had composed in her honour. "My boyfriend's here. He's never written me a limerick," Clinton said. "So, Marc, you'd better write me a limerick after this one." Her boyfriend is Marc Mezvinsky, an investment banker with Goldman Sachs and another Stanford graduate whom she has known since she was a teenager.
Both Mezvinsky's parents were members of Congress, and his mother, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, was an important congressional ally of Bill Clinton's. The New York Times reported last year that Chelsea has attended Sabbath dinners in the hope of learning more about Judaism, Mezvinsky's faith, fuelling speculation about an imminent marriage.
The wedding, if it happens, is unlikely to take place before November, when Mezvinsky's father, Ed, leaves prison after serving six years for fraud. The elder Mezvinsky, who represented an Iowa congressional district from 1973 to 1977, stole more than $10 million from investors, friends, law clients and even his late mother-in-law. During the 1990s the former congressman turned his hand to international business deals, earning nothing but losing millions to African tricksters' pyramid-type schemes. As his debts grew he turned to individual investors in the hope of recouping some of his losses, but in March 2001 he was indicted on 69 charges of bank fraud, mail fraud and wire fraud, pleading guilty to 31 counts a year later.
The younger Mezvinsky appears to have a better head for business than his father, although Clinton's success in the financial world suggests she will have little difficulty supporting herself. She has long maintained that she aspires to serve her country, but when a Maryland student asked if she would consider following her father and mother into politics, her answer was unequivocal. "No," she said. "I do have a very personal political ambition, and that is to help my mom become president."