Is Chelsea the latest Clinton with an eye on the White House?
SHE grew up in the uncomfortable spotlight of her father’s White House only to look on as her mother’s ambition was crushed by Donald Trump. Even so, Chelsea Clinton does not appear to have given up on politics.
Rather than retreating from the public eye since Hillary’s surprise electoral defeat last November, Ms Clinton has significantly raised her profile, prompting renewed speculation that she might one day run for office herself.
Despite her emphatic denials, the 37-year-old’s decision to give several interviews, pose for a magazine cover and write a book has only encouraged the chatter.
She has directly taken on Mr Trump and his administration on Twitter, where she has 1.6 million followers – a useful powerbase were she ever to decide to become the latest player in the family’s long-running political dynasty.
After Ms Clinton’s latest public appearance on Friday, giving a speech to a Variety magazine event in New York, another of the attendees, Gayle King, a television personality, said: “I’ll resist the urge to say Chelsea 2024,” referring to the next American election but one. “I won’t say it.”
Some have already voiced opposition to any prospect of another Clinton in power. Vanity Fair last week mocked Ms Clinton for writing about a letter she sent to Ronald Reagan at the age of five, imploring him not to visit a cemetery where Nazis were buried. “President Reagan still went, but at least I had tried in my own small way,” she wrote.
And columnist Michelle Malkin criticised Ms Clinton’s role at the Variety event, which celebrated the “power of women”.
“Insipid platitudes deserve eye rolls, not gala celebrations,” she wrote in the
New York Post. “What independent ‘power of women’ has Chelsea Clinton exercised – other than inheriting her father’s name and what’s left of her two-time-losing mother’s political cachet?”
Any election campaign would reveal little not already known about Ms Clinton. Last year, the New York Post disclosed comments it said she had made about religion at a recent fundraiser.
“I was raised in a Methodist church and I left the Baptist church before my dad did, because I didn’t know why they were talking to me about abortion when I was six in Sunday school – that’s a true story,” she reportedly said.
Since the election, Ms Clinton has publicly sparred with Kellyanne Conway, Mr Trump’s former campaign manager, when Ms Conway referred to a massacre at Bowling Green, Kentucky, that had never taken place. “Please don’t make up attacks,” Ms Clinton tweeted.
And she joined in the opprobrium directed at Sean Spicer, Mr Trump’s press secretary, after he suggested that Hitler did not use chemical weapons. “I hope @PressSec takes time to visit @ HolocaustMuseum,” she wrote.
Earlier this month, she posed for the cover of Variety. “I am not running for public office,” she told the magazine, but added: “I think being a citizen isn’t just what happens when there’s an election. . . We know the majority of our country doesn’t support what’s happening. We need to make it clear that we’re not the silent majority.”
Next month, she will publish a children’s book, She Persisted, about 13 American women who overcame adversity to make significant contributions to society.
Toluse Olorunnipa, who covers the White House for Bloomberg, said that talk of a run had inspired “a wide variety of responses”.
“Some people say she has political blood and she’d be a great future politician,” he said. “She’s a child of two people very well-versed in public policy and politics, she has name recongition, she’s young and a lot of people might see her as the future in some way.
“Then you have people still reeling from Hillary Clinton’s loss. The idea of another Clinton running for office is not something they’re very happy with just months after Hillary Clinton lost the presidency in a race a lot of people thought she should have won.”
Jon Karl, chief White House correspondent for ABC News, said the speculation began not long after the election but he has not heard “serious talk” about a run. “The Clintons have dominated Democratic Party politics for so long and she’s the next Clinton that could run,” he said.
“But there’s obvious baggage that comes with all of that and Democrats are, I think, through with the idea of stepping aside for a Clinton.”
‘She’s a child of two people very well-versed in public policy and politics, she has name recongition’