Chelsea Clinton - The First Daughter

By ROGER FRANKLIN

Almost every Saturday morning, a small band of protesters gathers outside the front gates of the home of the 41st President of the United States to demonstrate their hatred.

They are a zealous and zany bunch, these hardcore Clinton-haters. One, dressed as Old Nick, carries a sign that reads: "The President Married My Sister." Another commemorates the more sordid aspects of the Lewinsky affair by decking himself out as a giant cigar. Monica clones come and go, as does an argumentative fellow who wears a chicken outfit and gets into screaming matches with fellow protesters.

If you want to know how many people Bill Clinton has murdered, somebody at the Saturday morning gatherings will be happy to update the body count. The protesters' death list is now 52 which, if true, would place Clinton somewhere between Son of Sam and Sweeney Todd.

Even Socks, the White House cat, has been subjected to the demonstrators' rabid ridicule, apparently for no worse an offence than sharing a roof with the family the protesters love to hate.

But there has been one exception to the abuse: Chelsea Clinton.

While her parents have spent almost eight years ducking and weaving in the spotlight of scandal, their daughter has enjoyed a fragile immunity from the venom directed at the rest of her family. America's late-night comics don't make fun of her, nor do editorial cartoonists lampoon her homely looks.

Although there is a body of opinion on the extreme right that maintains that Hillary Clinton's former law partner, Webb Hubbell, is Chelsea's real father, even the unhinged hardcore of Clinton-haters outside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave leave the 20-year-old student pretty much alone.

"I guess she's a demilitarised zone," says Sean DeLeonas, the cartoonist for Rupert Murdoch's anti-Clinton New York Post, which has accused Clinton of everything from raping Arkansas nursing home owner Juanita Broaddrick to selling America's nuclear secrets to Beijing in return for campaign contributions.

"I mean, if I draw Bill using a dead fish as a sex aid, or if I make fun of Hillary's thick ankles, that's fair comment," DeLeonas continued. "But I'd feel really rotten targeting Chelsea. She's just a kid. Anyway, she didn't get to choose her parents."

Chelsea has remained a remarkably elusive presence. Until now, even the fanatics who insist that Hillary murdered White House aide Vince Foster to conceal the "truth" about the Whitewater real estate affair have given her a free pass.

The whole world knows of her father's affairs and her mother's ambitions. But of Chelsea there is next to nothing apart from what little can be gleaned from a portfolio of news photos chronicling her comings and goings: the First Daughter being lowered by a rope into the Waitomo Caves while dad attended last year's Apec conference in Auckland; Chelsea wearing Nigerian national costume as her mother addresses a summit of African women; the youngest Clinton in Pakistan and Peru, or bringing Christmas cheer to GIs in Kosovo.

That is pretty much it, apart from the most famous Chelsea photo of them all. It was snapped on the White House lawn two years ago on the morning after her father finally confessed to his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Waiting for a helicopter to whisk them off to Martha's Vineyard, Chelsea is holding her mother's hand on one side and her father's on the other - the fragile bond that binds her parents together. This family is damaged goods, the body language seems to be saying. Damaged but still hanging together, somehow, around their daughter.

Damaged goods is the label those who detest the Clintons would dearly love to stick on their daughter, to cite as further proof that everybody - even the Clintons' flesh and blood - has been sacrificed on the altar of Bill and Hills' personal ambitions. Yet the easy slur is belied by Chelsea's own resilience.

When they landed at Martha's Vineyard, it was the smiling and confident Chelsea who was first down the stairs to shake the hands of Cape Cod's leading citizens. Whatever her parents' problems, Chelsea was not about to become Exhibit A in the case against them.

The most obvious reason why the First Daughter enjoys a free pass is that there is not enough flesh on the bare bones of her public image in which the Clinton-haters could sink their barbs. Like the rest of her family, she doesn't give much away.

But now, after her much-photographed trip to the Sydney Olympics, Chelsea's lot may be about to change. If her immunity now vanishes she will have only herself to blame, having chosen to spend the last few months of her father's final term on the political firing line.

"Blame" could be the wrong word, since this is a cross Chelsea appears to be taking up of her own free will. It may well be that she will revel in the acidic attention. Shortly before leaving for Sydney, Chelsea said she would spend four months away from her studies to campaign on behalf of her mother's bid for a seat in the Senate. The move came as a surprise - as has the poise and assurance she has brought to the job of filling in for America's First Lady while her mother campaigns in New York.

At the Camp David summit, Chelsea not only played hostess but sat in on the negotiations, where she is reported to have offered her own suggestions for bringing peace to the Middle East.

When her father was in Colombia to outline the United States offensive against cocaine cartels, Chelsea dashed about in her own motorcade and schemed the local legislators like a pro.

To Clinton family friends, Chelsea's entry into the political arena comes as no surprise.

"She has impeccable political bloodiness on both sides of her family and she grew up in a house where politics and public service were everyone's bread-and-butter issues," says a Democratic Party official. "Actually, it would be more surprising if she didn't have a taste for politics."

Those who know the Stanford University history major describe her as a tough nut, a mix of her mother's imperious assurance and her father's easy familiarity. The hard shell is the result of a regime her parents began almost as soon as she was out of her .

"Bill and Hillary would set out to make Chelsea cry," says Clinton biographer David Marinas. "They'd all sit around the table and Hillary would say, 'Let's play a game. Let's pretend we're the people who tell lies about Daddy and see how we feel about them.'

"Then Hillary would start attacking Bill until the tears were rolling down Chelsea's face. When it was over, they would both hug her and share the Clinton world view - that it doesn't matter what the rest of the world says about them, always have each other. It was brutal psychological conditioning, but it was Bill and Hillary's way of incubating her in readiness for the contact sport of politics as it is played in Arkansas and Washington."

In another telling anecdote, Marinas quotes a Clinton family friend recounting how he had once overheard Bill singing a peculiar lullaby to his infant daughter. "I want a div-or-ce, I want a div-or-or-or-ce," the future president crooned.

Yet, at the same time as the Clintons were introducing their daughter to the political maelstrom and attempts of their own union, they were united in their desire to shield her. Even before Clinton took the oath of office for the first time, Administration officials contacted newspaper and magazine editors to warn them that the boss' daughter was out of bounds.

If they thought the White House was joking, they soon learned otherwise. Two months after Clinton took office in 1993, Saturday Night Live presented a vicious skit in which a cross-dressed comedian donned a burlesque wig and prominent teeth to make sport of then 12-year-old Chelsea's gawky awkwardness. The next day all hell broke loose, says a senior ABC news producer.

"We were told point blank that if the network's entertainment division ever dared to go after Chelsea again, the news division would be frozen out at the White House."

The policy worked. When the Monica mess was at its height, the only reports of Chelsea's "anguish" and "torment" appeared in the outlaw supermarket tabloids. When the Star, one of the most intrusive tabloids, said Chelsea was on the verge of a breakdown, sobbing alone in her dormitory room, mainstream journalists joined the White House in denouncing the gossip sheet as a rag best used for picking up dog dirt.

Respectable papers, the same ones which 20 years earlier had probed into the private life Jimmy Carter's daughter, Amy, heeded the warning.

Amy Holmes, of the conservative Independent Women's Forum, says that the magazine Answered was thinking of doing a story on Chelsea's problems at Stanford, including poor marks, what was said to be an eating disorder, and the breakup with her boyfriend.

"Well, they did the reporting," Holmes says, "but not a word was published.

"Someone, somewhere at the top, obviously made a decision that this was one story that did not need to be told.

"Her parents' productiveness could have been part of it. But you don't know the Clintons if you imagine that they had not done the calculations about how much more difficult widespread coverage of Chelsea's embarrassment would make it for Clinton to survive impeachment.

Maverick feminist Camille Paglia puts it more pungently: "That poor kid needs a permanent reservation on the couch of a good, a really good, psychiatrist.

"The damage doesn't show, but how could it not be there with parents like that?

"They've played a two-faced game with Chelsea ever since she was a baby, making a big deal out of her sacredness when it suited them and exploiting her when it united them.

"That photo on the White House lawn was the clincher. They could have flown her straight from Stanford to Martha's Vineyard, but instead they chose to drop her in front of the cameras in Washington to make a point: if his own daughter still holds his hand, he can't be that bad.

"Poor kid, the poor, poor kid."

At a recent debate between Hillary Clinton and Republican Senate contender Rick Lacy, the cameras flicked briefly to Chelsea after her mother answered a questioner who demanded to know why she had stayed with her philandering husband.

"This was the right decision for me," Hillary replied as Chelsea nodded in quiet but emphatic agreement. Later Chelsea demonstrated a sure touch as she told reporters in a series of "not-to-be attributed" quotes that her mother had done the right thing to save the marriage.

On the record, she kept it simple: "My mother has enormous inner strength - the strength New York needs."

What does the future hold for this child of the storm? Friends and relatives see a career in law - and maybe politics.

Chelsea has certainly done nothing to dismiss that notion by stepping into the limelight, although she should perhaps take a little more care to preserve her pristine image.

Several months ago, after the White House let it be known that there would be no objections if any paper reported that Chelsea had a new beau - a White House intern, these things must run in the family - the Washington Times reported that the two had been spotted drinking beer and smoking cigarettes at a Georgetown coffee bar.

At one of her mother's campaign stops, an over-enthusiastic supporter yelled his opinion that the constitutional amendment that prohibits presidents serving more than two terms should be repealed so that Bill could remain in office forever.

"Can't do that," Hillary said, "but if there's a House seat coming vacant, Chelsea might be interested in a few years."

Chelsea smiled knowingly at that one.