KEY POINTS:
When Hillary Clinton swept on to the stage at her own election party in a Manhattan ballroom on the night of Super Tuesday she was not alone. Just behind were her husband Bill, the former president, and their daughter Chelsea.
Chelsea stood out in a dress of black
and white panels, all grown up.
Chelsea's story is no less remarkable than her mother's tilt to be America's first female president. Her little bit of history-in-the-making could be that she will become the first American to twice be "first child".
Not all her memories of calling the White House home the first time around are happy ones. As much as her parents tried to protect their daughter - just 12 when Bill took his first oath of office - she was the target of mockery in the media and even in high political circles.
Now, though, Chelsea is 27 years old, a resident of Gramercy Park in New York with a tight clan of friends, a steady boyfriend whom, some say, she may soon marry, and a job with six-figure pay in a financial hedge-fund company. If Hillary becomes president, Chelsea is unlikely to move back into the White House.
That she is devoted to her mother and shares many of her characteristics is widely known. So, however mixed her feelings may be about her childhood on Pennsylvania Ave, she is committed to helping her win the presidency. She is working on her mother's campaign full bore.
She has taken a leave of absence from the hedge fund, Avenue Capital, and as each week passes her presence gets only larger. She is working her cellphone too. Among those Chelsea telephoned last week was Pat Waak in Denver. Waak is chairwoman of the Colorado Democratic Party and set to be a super-delegate at the Democratic convention at the end of August. Would she please support her mother, Chelsea asked?
The unspoken task given to her is to energise her generation of Democrats to support Hillary. It is a tough challenge because of the massive appeal to younger voters of Democrat competitor Barak Obama. Even some of Chelsea's Manhattan chums, we hear, went with Obama last week.
By any measure, Chelsea is now a public political figure. And yet, she somehow is allowed immunity from media interrogation. She has given no interviews and she avoids reporters with an almost obsessive zeal.
That protective bubble around Chelsea can be traced to the first days that Bill and Hillary took occupancy of the White House in 1993. The late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis paid a visit and urged the new first lady to protect Chelsea from the media.
That both her parents took that to heart is understandable. Chelsea, not helped by a mouth filled with braces, was already taking hits on comedy shows, including from actor Mike Myers on Saturday Night Live. Nothing was more shocking, however, than an episode in 1998 when John McCain, now the likely Republican candidate for president, told a joke in such astonishing bad taste that most of the American media refused even to report it. But his words did leak out.
Although this may not be verbatim, he said: "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno." (Reno was Clinton's Attorney-General.) Chelsea may shortly watch her mother battle and possibly defeat McCain. That would be revenge.
Has it taken Chelsea until her 28th year to begin returning the favour of looking after her parents? Think back to the Monica Lewinsky affair.
Ask Americans which images of Chelsea they most vividly remember. It is most likely they will evoke that touching portrait of Chelsea walking between her parents to the helicopter that was to transport them to a summer break just as the revelations were threatening to tear them apart.
She helped assure America the first family would hold. On that day, Chelsea returned to her troubled parents the love and protection they had always afforded her. Now she is doing it again.
- INDEPENDENT
