The Clintons' child's play
PHILADELPHIA -- The most complicated family act in American politics has a new attraction: the only child's one-woman show.
"I'm happy to talk about anything," Chelsea Clinton said Wednesday afternoon to a group of several hundred students hustled in the cold in a courtyard at the University of Pennsylvania. "I'd like to have a conversation this evening -- and I'll take as many as I can until the light goes from the sky."
Clinton, who will not speak to the press, has become a master of the town-hall-style meeting. In a breaking voice she credited to a mild sickness, Chelsea showed confidence in addressing policy and her parents' common command for specifics: Chelsea said her mother would replace the lightbulbs in 500,000 federal buildings, extend hate-crimes coverage to include transsexuals, and flatly "disagrees with General Petraeus" on strategy in Iraq.
"Somebody asked me if my mother had a view on the type of plastic used in seatbelts," Clinton recalled from a previous appearance. "I didn’t have an answer to that one."
Indeed, Clinton showed even greater evidence of having inherited her parents' skill in her deft avoidance of difficult questions. When asked where she disagreed with the family’s current candidate, Clinton said the answer was a private matter -- but tantalizingly, for a child raised in a post-ideological household, cast it in ideological terms. "There are some issues I'm more liberal than my mother on and some issues I’m more conservative than my mother on," she said.
Asked to respond to criticisms that her mother's election would prolong a two-decade streak of governance by Bushes and Clintons, Chelsea managed an only child's greatest feat: triangulating between her parents.
"You shouldn’t vote for or against my mom because of my dad," she said.
Asked to respond to criticisms that her mother's election would prolong a two-decade streak of governance by Bushes and Clintons, Chelsea managed an only child's greatest feat: triangulating between her parents.
"You shouldn’t vote for or against my mom because of my dad," she said.
Sassha, how is that statement triangulation? Her mom wants to win. Her dad wants her mom to win. They both want the same thing. Triangulation happens when someone stands in a third way, apart from two opposing stances.
What that is, is a feminist statement that women should not have to automatically defer their careers because of what their husbands did.
This is the funniest thing I've read in awhile. Thanks.
As a parent of five girls, it is refreshing to see that despite all the negative portrayal of the Clintons merited or not, they have raised a wonderful, intelligent daughter. My oldest daughter is three years younger than Chelsea and has not failed to disappoint either. So when I read all the bashing, criticism and hate spewed at Mrs. Clinton, it doesn't change my opinion that at least she is a wonderful MOM.
I applaud you Charly for a job well done, just as you expressed of Mrs. Clinton. I am the third born of six, and i would have to say my mother is amazing. She endured a very violent second marriage, lost three children, and still continues to live on but not without resistance. But inner strength i feel most women pocess. I feel any woman that can endure constant ridicule, negative comments on her political career, to me is slamming there own mother. The mothers that have faught for equality, a voice in society. And to Jason O'Reilly, i'm sure you make your mother proud.
I agree, she has raised a beautiful, intelligent young lady. She is very much like her mom. Strong and beautiful.
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