During her White House years, Chelsea Clinton has quietly blossomed into a confident and articulate young woman–rather an extraordinary achievement given the unhappy controversies dogging her parents. One reason may be the support she has inside the White House and the life she has carved for herself outside it. An only child, Chelsea has been virtually adopted as a younger sister by a handful of Hillary’s thirtysomething staffers. While Amy Carter had to run a press gauntlet to get to grade school, Chelsea is driven in an unmarked car to Washington’s exclusive Sidwell Friends, where teachers and classmates have fiercely guarded her privacy. (Clinton plans to express his appreciation to Chelsea’s classmates and parents when he speaks at Sidwell’s June 6 commencement.) After classes, Chelsea attends daily dance lessons at the Washington School of Ballet. Like any other teenager, she goes shopping and to movies with friends–though she often piles her curls under a hat to avoid being recognized.
Still, Hillary worries aloud about the “downsides” of life as the president’s daughter, such as being trailed by armed Secret Service agents on dates. So her mother has tried to compensate by offering Chelsea extraordinary travel opportunities. Their mother-daughter tours of South Asia, Bosnia and now Africa are an annual Easter ritual. In Africa, Chelsea was treated to experiences most adults could only dream of: chatting with Nelson Mandela, racing in a jeep across the Serengeti, getting a private tour of Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge, where the world’s oldest human skull was found.
At home, Hillary tries to keep public attention away from her daughter. But the developing world is something different, partly because Chelsea, as a young woman, has a message of her own for societies where daughters are not as prized as sons. The Clintons want people to realize “that the president has one child who happens to be a girl, and [he] invests in her and is proud of her,” Hillary said. “Any time you get a chance to exemplify those ideas, you might plant a seed. Who knows?” So move over, Madeleine Albright. Chelsea Clinton is the message.
