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Patriot Games
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http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/chelsea_emerging/2008/02/16/73193.html
Chelsea Clinton Steps on Political Stage
Saturday, February 16, 2008
DAYTON, Ohio -- Chelsea Clinton tells students about her mother's plans for
the economy and mortgages. The former first daughter outlines Hillary Rodham
Clinton's concern about Darfur and women's rights. She ticks through talking
points on electability, health care and the environment.
Oh, and she reveals her mother wants grandkids and her father builds their
schedule around a popular TV drama, "Grey's Anatomy."
Chelsea Clinton has emerged as a top surrogate for her mother as the former
first lady has fallen behind Sen. Barack Obama in the race for the
Democratic presidential nomination.
Now dispatched to college campuses, the long-silent Chelsea Clinton has
sought to blend campaign spin with personal touches. But she's also drawn a
share of unsought attention, including an MSNBC reporter who suggested she
is being "pimped out" by her parents.
The Clintons instituted a firm circle of silence around their daughter when
Bill Clinton won his first White House term in 1992. And she began this
campaign as uneasy stage-dressing beside her mother _ even ordered to hold
supporters' jackets on one New Hampshire stage. In Iowa and New Hampshire,
she never spoke.
By now, she's a full-fledged player in the campaign, something she had vowed
to avoid.
"I live and work in New York and have had a private life _ at least, did
until about five weeks ago," she lamented during a stop at Dayton's Sinclair
Community College. She's an associate with Avenue Capital, a $12 billion
hedge fund run by Marc Lasry, a longtime Clinton donor.
She's tried to be a good sport about her new role. At Sinclair, she wore an
oversized school sweat shirt that muted her clapping. As she took the
microphone, she pushed up the sleeves and went to work trying to sell her
mother's campaign.
While the answers are almost identical to her mother's, the presentation is
far from it. Hillary Rodham Clinton on the campaign trail is a polished
professional _ every hand gesture and every pause choreographed for maximum
effect. Chelsea lacks the precise execution her mother has perfected.
Chelsea's voice is soft and often trails off at the end of sentences, which
frustrates audiences.
"Where did she go to school," Ohio Wesleyan freshman Erica Hankins asked a
campaign aide during one of her appearances.
She attended Stanford University and Oxford in England, the aide answered.
"You'd think they would teach her how to talk louder," Hankins replied
dryly.
Despite growing up around politicians and campaigns, political life is
clearly not her strength.
"The full stretch of my political aspiration is to help her by my presence,"
she said. And she doesn't plan to run for office herself or move back into
the White House.
"I'm 27. I'm not going to be moving back in with parents, as much as I love
them," she says repeatedly on the trail.
While pressing her mother's case, she still has refused to talk
on-the-record to reporters. She politely smiles when reporters ask
questions.
In Iowa, she even refused to answer questions from a 9-year-old Scholastic
News reporter.
"I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press and that applies to you,
unfortunately. Even though I think you're cute," Chelsea told the pint-sized
journalist.
Her new role hasn't come without criticism. Chelsea Clinton has been calling
and meeting with superdelegates, but MSNBC anchor David Shuster noted that
she refuses to answer questions about what she's doing. Shuster was later
suspended for suggesting she had been "pimped out."
Her visit to a New Haven, Conn., polling location _ where she delivered
coffee to election workers _ raised the question of whether she was
campaigning illegally close to where people vote.
In the final campaign push, she's tried to humanize her mother and father.
She told students at Omaha's Creighton University that her father built
their night around ABC-TV's "Grey's Anatomy."
And when an Ohio State University student asked last week about health care,
she worked her mother's wish to be a grandmother into her answer.
"What your girlfriend needs is different than what I may need _ is different
than what I would need when I make my mother happy and give her
grandchildren _ is different than what my grandmother needs," she said.
"There are different health needs based on our situations."
In praising her mother's ability to forge bipartisan partnerships in the
Senate, Chelsea even made a public reference to her father's impeachment and
Senate trial for lying about his affair with White House intern Monica
Lewinsky.
"She and Senator (Lindsay) Graham _ who is a conservative and Republican
senator from South Carolina who is one of the people who prosecuted my
father in the '90s, so maybe wouldn't be who you would think she would be in
partnership with _ have found common ground on standing up for our
veterans."
She must be doing something right, because the campaign gave a plum
assignment this weekend: three-days of campaigning in Hawaii, where
Democrats hold caucuses Tuesday.
Chelsea Clinton Steps on Political Stage
Saturday, February 16, 2008
DAYTON, Ohio -- Chelsea Clinton tells students about her mother's plans for
the economy and mortgages. The former first daughter outlines Hillary Rodham
Clinton's concern about Darfur and women's rights. She ticks through talking
points on electability, health care and the environment.
Oh, and she reveals her mother wants grandkids and her father builds their
schedule around a popular TV drama, "Grey's Anatomy."
Chelsea Clinton has emerged as a top surrogate for her mother as the former
first lady has fallen behind Sen. Barack Obama in the race for the
Democratic presidential nomination.
Now dispatched to college campuses, the long-silent Chelsea Clinton has
sought to blend campaign spin with personal touches. But she's also drawn a
share of unsought attention, including an MSNBC reporter who suggested she
is being "pimped out" by her parents.
The Clintons instituted a firm circle of silence around their daughter when
Bill Clinton won his first White House term in 1992. And she began this
campaign as uneasy stage-dressing beside her mother _ even ordered to hold
supporters' jackets on one New Hampshire stage. In Iowa and New Hampshire,
she never spoke.
By now, she's a full-fledged player in the campaign, something she had vowed
to avoid.
"I live and work in New York and have had a private life _ at least, did
until about five weeks ago," she lamented during a stop at Dayton's Sinclair
Community College. She's an associate with Avenue Capital, a $12 billion
hedge fund run by Marc Lasry, a longtime Clinton donor.
She's tried to be a good sport about her new role. At Sinclair, she wore an
oversized school sweat shirt that muted her clapping. As she took the
microphone, she pushed up the sleeves and went to work trying to sell her
mother's campaign.
While the answers are almost identical to her mother's, the presentation is
far from it. Hillary Rodham Clinton on the campaign trail is a polished
professional _ every hand gesture and every pause choreographed for maximum
effect. Chelsea lacks the precise execution her mother has perfected.
Chelsea's voice is soft and often trails off at the end of sentences, which
frustrates audiences.
"Where did she go to school," Ohio Wesleyan freshman Erica Hankins asked a
campaign aide during one of her appearances.
She attended Stanford University and Oxford in England, the aide answered.
"You'd think they would teach her how to talk louder," Hankins replied
dryly.
Despite growing up around politicians and campaigns, political life is
clearly not her strength.
"The full stretch of my political aspiration is to help her by my presence,"
she said. And she doesn't plan to run for office herself or move back into
the White House.
"I'm 27. I'm not going to be moving back in with parents, as much as I love
them," she says repeatedly on the trail.
While pressing her mother's case, she still has refused to talk
on-the-record to reporters. She politely smiles when reporters ask
questions.
In Iowa, she even refused to answer questions from a 9-year-old Scholastic
News reporter.
"I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press and that applies to you,
unfortunately. Even though I think you're cute," Chelsea told the pint-sized
journalist.
Her new role hasn't come without criticism. Chelsea Clinton has been calling
and meeting with superdelegates, but MSNBC anchor David Shuster noted that
she refuses to answer questions about what she's doing. Shuster was later
suspended for suggesting she had been "pimped out."
Her visit to a New Haven, Conn., polling location _ where she delivered
coffee to election workers _ raised the question of whether she was
campaigning illegally close to where people vote.
In the final campaign push, she's tried to humanize her mother and father.
She told students at Omaha's Creighton University that her father built
their night around ABC-TV's "Grey's Anatomy."
And when an Ohio State University student asked last week about health care,
she worked her mother's wish to be a grandmother into her answer.
"What your girlfriend needs is different than what I may need _ is different
than what I would need when I make my mother happy and give her
grandchildren _ is different than what my grandmother needs," she said.
"There are different health needs based on our situations."
In praising her mother's ability to forge bipartisan partnerships in the
Senate, Chelsea even made a public reference to her father's impeachment and
Senate trial for lying about his affair with White House intern Monica
Lewinsky.
"She and Senator (Lindsay) Graham _ who is a conservative and Republican
senator from South Carolina who is one of the people who prosecuted my
father in the '90s, so maybe wouldn't be who you would think she would be in
partnership with _ have found common ground on standing up for our
veterans."
She must be doing something right, because the campaign gave a plum
assignment this weekend: three-days of campaigning in Hawaii, where
Democrats hold caucuses Tuesday.
