This Time Around, Chelsea Clinton Is Stepping Into the Spotlight on Her Terms

If Hillary Clinton wins in November, she’ll make history. And so will her daughter, Chelsea, as the first person to be “first daughter” twice. This time, as an accomplished 36-year-old professional, wife, and mother of two, Chelsea would fill that role on her own terms.

If I had my choice, I would want the attention involved with being first daughter at 36, rather than during my teenage years. Chelsea was 12 years old when her father was sworn in as president, and she’s joked about her “awkward years” as first daughter. Remember being 12? It was hard! And I’m not just talking about braces. The awkward stage goes beyond physical appearance, as I recall navigating changes in friendships, family, and more. Imagine dealing with all that in the White House. Chelsea did it with grace and endeared herself to the American people.

What Chelsea has done since leaving the White House the first time could shape the kind of first daughter she would be the second time around.

• In 1997, while her father was still president and dealing with the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Chelsea left the White House for Stanford University. She graduated in 2001 with a BA in history.
• After Stanford, Chelsea went to Oxford University and completed her master's in 2002.
• When she returned to New York City, Chelsea worked for three years for consulting firm McKinsey & Co and three years for a hedge fund called Avenue Capital Group.
• She also received a master's in public health from Columbia University.
• Chelsea spent some time in academia, teaching a class at Columbia and working as assistant vice provost at NYU.
• In 2005, she started dating her now-husband, Marc Mezvinsky, and they married in 2010. He went to Stanford with Chelsea and also has political parents. Both his mother and father served in Congress.
• In 2011, she took a role as a special correspondent with NBC. Her $600,000 salary and charges of nepotism caught her some flak.
• In 2014, back in New York, Chelsea completed a Ph.D. in international relations from Oxford.
• She eventually joined the newly rebranded Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation as vice chair, which is her main focus today.
• Chelsea gave birth to her daughter, Charlotte, in September 2014 and her son, Aidan, in June 2016.

Now let’s get back to the campaign trail. In 2008, when Chelsea’s mom ran against Barack Obama, Chelsea, then 28, stood by her side. She actually went to 400 events in 40 states, and introduced her mother at the DNC that year. But she was not fully comfortable, and there were reports that she wouldn’t talk to the press on the trail, even telling a 9-year-old “kid reporter” that she would happily take a photo with him but couldn’t “answer any questions because you’re press.”

Of course, Hillary didn’t make it out of the primaries in 2008 and neither did Chelsea’s role as her advocate. This election, her responsibilities as champion of her mother are greater than ever and her introduction speech will be her biggest moment on the national stage. She seems more natural this time around. Just this week, she even took on Donald Trump, in her own mild-mannered way. Chelsea was asked at a Facebook/Glamour DNC event how she would respond to claims that Trump would fight for equal pay, claims made by Ivanka Trump (who is apparently a friend). Here’s what Chelsea said:

“How would your father do that, given it’s not something he’s spoken about? There are no policies on any of those fronts that you just mentioned on his website — not last week, not this week — so I think the how question is super important in politics as it is in life."

Chelsea has the power to make Hillary relatable. As in Bill Clinton’s speech, we likely can expect a weaving of Hillary’s virtues as a mother and her record as an advocate for women and children. Chelsea may also use the platform as a chance to contrast her mother with Donald Trump. Thursday on the Today show, she told Matt Lauer how she felt about the RNC: “As a mom, what I found so disturbing were the things that were being said on a national stage, literally on the stage and off the stage, around the convention about women, about minorities, about Muslims, about immigrants.”

Many women watching at home must understand the sense of daughterly pride across Chelsea’s face at the DNC, when cameras pan to her beaming after someone praises her mother. Last week, in a post written by Chelsea on POPSUGAR, she gave us a sense of what she might say. Sharing vintage family photos, Chelsea wrote: “My mom has been my hero for my whole life. I remember watching how hard she worked when I was growing up and thinking she could do anything. She's still working hard and she's not done yet.” Neither is Chelsea.

Source: Getty