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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
Is the party over for Chelsea?
Robert Tait
Amid the maelstrom that continues to envelop them, a major landmark will be
passed in the Clinton family tomorrow; Chelsea comes of age. The only
daughter of the still compulsively newsworthy ex-president and the recently
elected senator for New York will turn 21. In normal circumstances, it should
be a matter for raucous rejoicing. The once gauche teenager with the gaudy
brace is but a memory, ready to strike out into a fully-fledged state of
independence.
But for Chelsea the auguries could hardly be grimmer. With the raging pardons
controversy casting as thick a pall over the former first family as anything
they ever encountered during their scandal-plagued White House years, the
mood of celebration will be decidedly dampened. Her father’s reputation is
now in unmitigated disrepute; her mother’s political career is tarnished,
perhaps beyond repair.
For Chelsea, who was a model of public decorum throughout the Clinton
presidency, these troubling considerations may be lightened by the knowledge
that she is now old enough to celebrate her birthday by legally imbibing
alcohol (21 is the legal drinking age in America). But what does it say about
the say about Chelsea's long-term future? How will she be affected by the
experience of witnessing her parents’ lives assailed by an unremitting
avalanche of allegations, denunciations and revelations?
The lifetime track records of the offspring of presidents present a
predictably mixed picture. Some fade into obscurity; Others reappear to
experience a brief 15 minutes of fame (or infamy) in their own right; very
occasionally, still others will be cast by their father’s aura into a
lifetime of reflected celebrity; and just once in a blue moon, along will
come one so impressed by their father’s former job that they decide to seek
it for themselves.
There are no obvious clues as to which category Chelsea will fall into.
During the Clinton White House years, she was assiduously protected from
media intrusion. Interviews were out of the question; Chelsea, in fact, was
barred by her parents from speaking to the press. The sound of her voice
remains a mystery to the public.
Nor does history necessarily offer a guide. There is simply no precedent for
the child of a president having to watch the strains in their parents’
marriage being aired in public.
That experience may have shaped her beyond measure. At the time of the Monica
Lewinsky scandal, psychologists speculated on the toll the revelations of her
father’s misdeeds might be taking on the first daughter.
The abiding public image of Chelsea was provided when the saga was at its
zenith. It was August 1998. Her father had at last brought himself to openly
admit his "inappropriate" relationship. The first couple were estranged,
irreconcilably so it seemed at the time. The media ogled for evidence of a
marital break-up. But when the President and First Lady emerged from the
White House, on their way to the presidential helicopter taking them to their
summer vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, there was Chelsea plonked strategically
between them, holding on to the hand of each parent, a living symbol of
familial unity. It was an intensely political gesture, the mark of a young
woman willing to step into the breach when her parents were emotionally
indisposed.
Bearing that incident in mind, the newly mature Chelsea seems an unlikely
candidate for a future of anonymity. For all her parents’ protection, she has
been close to the spotlight since she was 12. Fame and attention won’t feel
unnatural to her. Nor does the glow of celebrity surrounding the Clintons
show any signs of fading, even if their reputation is now in freefall. So now
that she is old enough to escape the protective parental cocoon, Chelsea may
become fair game for a media that was only just managing to restrain itself
while her father was in office.
The setting for this could be in Britain. Chelsea is due to graduate from
California’s prestigious Stanford university in the spring. She is said to
have expressed a desire to follow a path trod by her father more than 30
years ago by studying at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship.
In a sense, that would follow a pattern. Bill and Hillary seem to have been
grooming their daughter to follow in their footsteps into a life of
high-profile public service. Last year, while the teenage twin daughters of
George Bush scarcely made an appearance on the campaign trail, Chelsea
assumed a greater visibility than ever. With Mrs Clinton campaigning in the
New York senate race, she took on the role of an ersatz First Lady,
accompanying her father on numerous diplomatic trips abroad and on a visit to
US troops in the Balkans. She was at the president’s side at the United
Nations global summit in New York last September. When Clinton was locked in
intensive talks with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat at Camp David last July,
desperately trying to broker peace between the Israelis and Palestinians,
Chelsea was nearby - and apparently became the confidante for her father’s
deepest fears. Two months later, she was given her highest profile billing -
officially representing the First Family at the Olympics in Sydney.
When she wasn’t otherwise engaged in diplomatic globetrotting, Chelsea was
frequently seen by her mother’s side on the campaign trail. All in all, her
formative years have provided her with an apprenticeship for a career in
politics.
A blueprint already exists, in the form of her father’s successor. By all
accounts, no-one - including his parents - expected George W Bush to retrace
the path followed by his father to the White House. The younger Bush had
exhibited harum-scarum qualities deep into adult life. George W’s more
politically inclined younger brother, Jeb, was considered the most likely
presidential heir of a Bush political dynasty. The privilege of an elite
education (Andover, Yale - both of which Bush Snr also attended - and Harvard
Business School) had not appeared to imbue George Bush’s eldest son with a
sense of high purpose.
Nor did success come easily to George W, as it had with his father. Bush the
elder had gone into the Texas oil business and made a fortune; his son
followed suit and lost millions.
But beneath a bluff persona, the spectre of his father’s shadow has long
haunted the younger Bush. The very questions which now pertain to Chelsea
Clinton once preoccupied him. After his father was elected to the White House
in 1988, the son who would one day emulate him commissioned a secret report
on the on the fate of presidential offspring. The resulting 44-page document
- titled All The President's Children - had some chilling lessons.
While some children flourished, it showed, others were crushed by the weight
of raised expectations.
One case in particular caught Bush’s attention, that of John Adams, the
United States’ second president. Two of Adams’s children succumbed to
alcoholism, but a third, John Quincy Adams, succeeded his father to the
presidency. Bush, who had recently given up drinking, was sufficiently
disturbed by the report to order it destroyed. But he clearly absorbed its
significance. Five weeks ago he became the first presidential son since the
aforementioned John Quincy to follow his father to the White House.
The Bush case is clearly out of the ordinary. The chances of Chelsea
capitalising on the Clinton name - even if it were untarnished - to elevate
herself to the presidency in later life are small indeed.
And in any case, it is rare for children of the White House to inherit their
father’s presidential ambitions. Some, however, adopt other qualities
identified with their famous progenitors. This was the case with Amy Carter,
daughter of Jimmy Carter. President Carter was commonly identified as a
righteous figure, who would often stress idealism at the expense of political
practicalities. This quality rubbed off on Amy, whom her father had once
famously - and embarrassingly - suggested advised him on foreign policy (she
was 13 at the time).
During the 1980s, with her father defeated and languishing in the political
wilderness, Amy embarked on a brief but highly publicised career as a student
radical. While studying at Brown University, she was repeatedly in the news
as a focal point of public demonstrations on a range of issues, most notably
against apartheid in South Africa. Times have changed, though. Little has
been heard of from Amy in years, while her father has re-emerged in recent
years as a highly visible and respected elder statesman. Bill Clinton, in
fact, has cited Carter as the example on which he would like to model his
ex-presidency.
But if Amy Carter was unscarred by her father’s career, the same cannot be
said for the children of two of the 20th century’s most compelling American
presidents, John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
Kennedy’s assassination and the posthumous myth of Camelot meant the lifelong
glare of celebrity would always be with his children, Caroline and John Jnr.
In adult life, John inherited the mantle of the Kennedy fame, using it to
found his own current affairs magazine, George. But he also inherited the
so-called Kennedy curse. In July 1999, John, his wife Carolyn and her sister,
were killed when a plane he was piloting crashed into the sea near Martha’s
Vineyard.
The Nixon daughters, Patricia and Julie, endured their worse traumas while
their father was in office. They had to watch while his political career was
destroyed by Watergate.
The elder of the two, Patricia, was derided as a spoilt little princess by
some on the White House staff. On one occasion, she reported a secret service
agent for allegedly staring at her legs while aboard Airforce One. The
wedding of Julie to David Eisenhower, grandson of the former president,
Dwight Eisenhower, contained a harbinger of Nixon’s downfall. The event was
hyped like the marriage of Royals. The White House was bedecked in flummery.
A multi-storey wedding cake was baked using an old Nixon recipe which the
White House encouraged other Americans to try. The recipe failed in kitchens
across America.
Worse was in store. Nixon had hoped his daughter’s wedding would be the
social event of the year, dominating the news headlines for days. It didn’t.
The following day’s New York Times carried a front-page picture caption on
the wedding, which was dwarfed by a bombshell story next to it. The paper had
come into possession of the Pentagon papers, an explosive indictment of US
policy on Vietnam. The revelation triggered a frenzied undercover White House
surveillance operation that led to directly to Watergate.
Little has been heard of the Nixon daughters since, though both occasionally
surface to attest fealty to their father's memory.
Chelsea Clinton may have been spared the political and personal wreckage
endured by the Nixon and the Kennedy offspring, but she still has absorbed
much in her formative years. Whatever her future holds, she will have learnt
from her parents a vital lesson in the arts of survival.
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