Like mother, like daughter for Clinton ladies

As Hillary Clinton’s long-awaited book is finally about to be released, Bette Browne reveals why Chelsea is emerging as the power behind the throne.

HILLARY CLINTON has a new hairstyle that Democrats love and Monica Lewinsky is back to the delight of Republicans — sure-fire signs that a Clinton bid for the White House is close at hand.

But Hillary Clinton herself is focusing on more serious matters to further her presidential ambitions — the imminent launch of her book Hard Choices and deployment of a powerful asset waiting in the wings, her daughter Chelsea.

Few can forget the photo of Chelsea Clinton walking between her parents and holding the hand of each of them as the Lewinsky scandal looked like consuming the family back in 1998. But they survived and thrived and now 34-year-old Chelsea, a financial expert and journalist, is emerging as a central player in her mother’s presidential ambitions.

Both are known to be extremely close and whether or not Chelsea wants her mother to run is said to be a big factor feeding into Hillary’s final decision.

Chelsea is a strong organisational force within the family, bringing business acumen and hard-nosed focus to the political powerhouse, and Hillary sees her daughter’s skills as pivotal in any campaign.

She is known to admire Chelsea’s ability to sort out problems and to get things done in a business-like fashion. Where Bill might be reluctant to offend a supporter, insiders say Chelsea will do what needs to be done.

Certainly, she has proven that in how she handled some tricky personnel and financial issues that emerged at the charitable Clinton Foundation.

“Chelsea has a very acute business sense and is very well keyed into the business world. She played a big role in sorting the foundation out. She was behind the firing of individuals and cleaned up house pretty quickly and efficiently,” a source familiar with the issues told me.

Chelsea’s name has since been added to the foundation, which is now the Bill Hillary and Chelsea Clinton foundation, of which Chelsea is vice-chair.

Like her mother, she is a strong advocate for global health and women’s rights issues and has played a key role in developing policies at the foundation to address childhood obesity, HIV and AIDS.

Such issues will figure prominently in Hard Choices, due out on June 10. It will give Hillary Clinton’s “inside account of the crises, choices and challenges” she faced as secretary of state and “how those experiences drive her view of the future”, according to publishers Simon & Schuster. The book will also chronicle Clinton’s travel to 112 countries, including Ireland.

Indeed, Ireland is an issue close to Chelsea’s heart, too. She has visited here a number of times and her thesis at Stanford University focused on the Irish peace process.

“She is very organised, very focused and very smart, maybe even smarter than Bill and Hillary,” according to Stella O’Leary, president of the Irish-American Democrats lobby group, who is close to the family and knows Chelsea well.

It’s an opinion with which Bill Clinton concurs. When asked once who would make a better president, Hillary or Chelsea, he responded: “Day after tomorrow, my wife, because she’s had more experience. Over the long run, Chelsea. She knows more than we do about everything.”

He made the point again when Chelsea received a doctorate degree in international relations at Oxford on May 10, bringing her number of degrees to four.

She now has “as many as her parents do — combined,” he remarked, adding: “When she was younger, the way all kids are, she thought she knew more than I did about everything. But alas, in my dotage, it turned out to be true!”

Chelsea is not without her critics. Some say that while her business skills along with her mother’s discipline are her strong points, she tends to lack the depth of her father’s well honed people skills.

Still, the overall package would make for a potent political force in any presidential campaign. Hillary would deploy Bill as communicator-in-chief, while Chelsea would focus on organisational issues and root out the kind of infighting that dogged Hillary’s unsuccessful campaign in 2008.

“Chelsea is a far more practical person than her parents,” according to one Washington insider. “She’d play a big role in keeping a campaign focused.”

She would also be important in organising younger voters and would help counter the age issue for Hillary, who will be 69 if she runs in 2016.

Chelsea will also have made her a grandmother by then. Americans haven’t batted an eyelid at presidents like the first George Bush being a grandfather or the fact that Mitt Romney, who sought the White House in 2012, has 13 grandchildren. But nothing will be off limits when it comes to Hillary Clinton.

Republican strategist Karl Rove likes to focus on Hillary’s age and health and has already begun firing some ugly salvos.

Ignoring assurances to the contrary by Hillary Clinton’s doctors, he suggested recently that she may be suffering from brain damage as a result of the fall in December 2012.

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill castigated Rove for making the assertion. “Karl Rove has deceived the country for years, but there are no words for this level of lying,” he said.

Then there’s Monica Lewinsky who began to write again recently in Vanity Fair about her dalliance with the former president. But most Americans are unlikely to want to go there again.

Nevertheless, Washington does cesspool politics very well and if Hillary Clinton does run we are likely to see one of the dirtiest campaigns for some time, fuelled by record spending.

All three Clintons are well aware it would be a dog fight to the finish line.

It helps Chelsea too that she has been personally exposed to the nastier side of politics. While she is now a supremely assured sophisticated young woman, I well remember during my time in Washington when she was going through her awkward teenage years that she was the target of unseemly swipes about her looks not just from the likes of Rush Limbaugh but also from political heavyweight Senator John McCain.

But none of it seems to have deterred her. In 2007 and 2008, she campaigned extensively, especially on college campuses, for her mother. At the 2008 Democratic convention she introduced Hillary with a long video tribute, calling her “my hero”.

There was much speculation at the time about her possible political ambitions. She said she wasn’t interested then but subsequently indicated she might consider public office if she could make a “meaningful impact”.

Might she get a job if there was a Hillary Clinton White House?

“Hillary would have to be careful,” Stella O’Leary cautions. “Going back to the Kennedys there was a lot of resentment when JFK appointed his brother Robert as attorney general.

“I think Chelsea would be more involved in the foundation. It might not be a popular move to give her a role in the government. More likely, she’d get something off-site.” So it may well be a case of hard choices ahead for mother and daughter. But first there is the baby. Certainly, Chelsea and husband Marc Mezvinsky, whom she married in 2010, will have plenty of space.

The apartment they snapped up in Manhattan for a cool $10.5 million has four bedrooms, six bathrooms, a home office, a den, a gym and a media room.

And by now it probably also has a baby room.