The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Chelsea Clinton may lend a hand if her mother wins
Some traditional first-lady duties could fall to her.
PHILADELPHIA — 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.
“I am deeply biased toward my mother,” Chelsea 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.”
Hillary Clinton’s historic nomination has already scrambled the established political family order, compelling Bill 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.
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 she 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.
“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 Bill 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, Bill Clinton has some freedom to rethink the job, and Hillary 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.
First lady Betty Ford arguably had more long-term effect on American life, by easing stigmas on breast cancer and alcoholism, than her husband in his short Oval Office stint. 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.
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 her graduate degrees from Oxford and Columbia and her career in business consulting and nonprofit management. But friends of Chelsea 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.
Chelsea 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.
“I honestly think she’s trying to get through the convention,” said Elizabeth Weindruch, a childhood friend from Little Rock, Ark., stressing that Chelsea Clinton had not determined what she hoped to focus on after the election.
It was been a heady week for the younger Clinton, preparing to address the convention Thursday, 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 suffered a minor sightseeing injury. (She got leg cramps racing up the steps at the Statue of Liberty with Weindruch.)
“We were just kids running around New York,” Weindruch said Wednesday, en route to Philadelphia to be with her friend once more.
Chelsea Clinton’s schedule this week has been at least as busy.