Chelsea Clinton May Be Willing to Lend a Hand if Her Mother Wins
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A First Daughter’s Second Ride
Chelsea Clinton used to be known for being kept out of the spotlight. This election, she has taken on a much more significant role, and speculation has surrounded where she would fit in the White House. By ERICA BERENSTEIN on Publish DateJuly 28, 2016. Photo by Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times.Watch in Times Video »
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Bill Clinton does not know his way around a china pattern.
He is unlikely, friends said, to dwell on the trimmings of the White House Christmas tree.
And if he is still smooth at small talk when he must be, happy to riff on sports and science until the last guest has left, the staid ceremonial duties of a presidential spouse do not hold much appeal.
With this in mind, old family hands have gravitated toward a typical Clintonian solution should the former president find himself as first gentleman in 2017: Perhaps the first daughter could help.
Just as she assumed a lead role in her father’s foundation and became a chief campaign surrogate for her mother, Chelsea Clinton is willing to step up should her parents need her if they return to the White House, according to the former first daughter’s friends.
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The third partner in the family business of being Clintons, Ms. Clinton’s bond to her parents, so familiar to Americans from her adolescence in the 1990s, will be on display once more on Thursday. One week after Ivanka Trump served as her father’s chief character witness at the Republican gathering in Cleveland, Ms. Clinton will introduce her mother at the convention inside the Wells Fargo Center, making the case for Hillary Clinton’s compassion and steady hand.
“I am deeply biased toward my mother,” Ms. Clinton said this week, flashing a coy smile at a panel event with the actresses Lena Dunham and America Ferrera. “I make no pretense to the contrary.”
Mrs. Clinton’s historic nomination has already scrambled the established political family order, compelling Mr. Clinton on Tuesday night to deliver his own take on a traditional first spouse speech — a former president reveling in humanizing, if airbrushed, portraiture of a partner and a parent.Continue reading the main story
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Clinton advisers say that Chelsea Clinton’s influence and involvement in a prospective administration have not been given much thought. But they also say that Ms. Clinton is likely to lend a hand around major events and holidays, at least by phone and email, and to help her father with some of the traditional duties of a president’s spouse.
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“She has a deep bond with them and she knows that she can be a lot of help to them if they return to the White House,” said Thomas F. (Mack) McLarty III, a close friend of the Clintons and a former chief of staff to Mr. Clinton. “Chelsea is so substantive, and has two young children, that I don’t see her playing White House social secretary. But I do think she will chip in to help her father and mother with managing life in the White House.”
Given that the spousal role often comes down to what the person makes of it, Mr. Clinton has some freedom to rethink the job, and Mrs. Clinton has signaled that she would want him to play a policy role. But the Clintons are also sensitive to not giving short shrift to the influence that first ladies have had, and advisers to the couple say that the three Clintons, as a family, will discuss ways to carry out that role.
The first lady Betty Ford arguably had more long-term impact on American life, by easing stigmas on breast cancer and alcoholism, than her one-term husband. Jackie Kennedy and Nancy Reagan defined style for many women of their generations. Lady Bird Johnson remains deeply admired as a symbol of strength and loyalty to her husband. So does Eleanor Roosevelt, who became a political force in her own right.
Hillary Clinton redefined the role of first lady by taking on a policy role on health care – failing on the goal of national health insurance but succeeding with congressional allies to enact the federal children’s health insurance programs. And Michelle Obama has been a significant role model for women of color and a particular inspiration for young black girls in low-income communities.Photo
Ms. Clinton and Mrs. Clinton in Des Moines on Jan. 30, two days before the Iowa caucuses.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
But any suggestion that Chelsea Clinton might be relied upon to perform traditional first lady tasks has the potential to strike a nerve, prompting concerns about an overly gendered view of presidential family roles.
And such a role might seem incongruent with Ms. Clinton’s graduate degrees from Oxford and Columbia and her career in business consulting and nonprofit management. But friends of Ms. Clinton say she would never be offended if her parents asked her for help. Her mother, after all, was a Yale Law School star and accomplished lawyer when she threw herself into the role of first lady in the 1990s.
Ms. Clinton is 36 — on the millennial borderline — seasoned enough to headline panels on global health and women’s rights and young enough, particularly in her mother’s orbit of high-profile supporters, to serve as an ambassador of sorts to 20-somethings skeptical of the Clinton name.
She has two children, Charlotte, almost 2, and a 5-week-old, Aidan. She will not be moving back into the White House.
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“I honestly think she’s trying to get through the convention,” said Elizabeth Weindruch, a childhood friend from Little Rock, Ark., stressing that Ms. Clinton had not determined what she hoped to focus on after the election.
It was been a heady week for Ms. Clinton, preparing to address the convention 24 years after joining her parents, not quite yet a teenager, in New York for her father’s nomination.
In 1992, she grinned through orthodontic braces, played cards with friends and sustained a minor sightseeing injury. (She got leg cramps racing up the steps at the Statue of Liberty with Ms. Weindruch.)
“We were just kids running around New York,” Ms. Weindruch said Wednesday, en route to Philadelphia to be with Ms. Clinton once more.Photo
Ms. Clinton, center, watching Bill Clinton’s speech with her husband, Mark Mezvinsky, right, at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on Tuesday. CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times
Ms. Clinton’s schedule this week has been at least as busy.
On Tuesday night, perched in a box beside her husband since 2010, Marc Mezvinsky, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, Ms. Clinton choked up throughout her father’s speech. He recalled the evening of her birth, the time they watched a “Police Academy” marathon together, the day he dropped her off at college (Stanford) as Mrs. Clinton spread liner paper across a drawer.
On Wednesday, Ms. Clinton held forth on gay rights and voter outreach at a lunch for the Human Rights Campaign, earning two standing ovations and telling the crowd that she had been straining to suppress tears all week.
An attendee, John Klenert, said he had watched Ms. Clinton grow up. He “felt sorry for her” in her youth, he said, marveling at her evolution now.
And he chafed, unprompted, at grumblings that Ms. Clinton should assist her mother in social affairs.Slide Show
SLIDE SHOW|33 Photos
Photographs From Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention
Photographs From Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention
CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
“It’s an insult,” he said. “If and when Hillary is in the White House, she can hire somebody.”
Donald J. Trump’s campaign is likewise considering how it might put family members to best use if the Republican nominee is elected.
The Trump team has made clear that Ivanka, his oldest daughter, would take a leading role in an administration, along with her husband, Jared Kushner.
At the panel with Ms. Dunham and Ms. Ferrera, Ms. Clinton took aim at Ms. Trump, with whom she had become friends in recent years, in response to a question about her father’s policies.
Ms. Clinton reminded the crowd that some of Ms. Trump’s paeans to women’s economic issues in her convention speech last week bore little resemblance to anything Mr. Trump has said on the campaign trail.
“There are no policies on any of those fronts that you just mentioned on his website,” she said, imagining a conversation with Ms. Trump. “Not last week, not this week.”
A few minutes later, the youth-focused gathering — hosted by Glamour and Facebook, with an open bar — neared its end with an appearance from a pant-suited dance group, performing to a Beyoncé song.
Soon, the party was over. Ms. Clinton smiled politely and walked off the stage. She was expected a short while later in the convention hall, to cheer her parents on.
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