Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review Sept. 7, 2000/ 5 Elul, 5760

Wesley Pruden

Wes Pruden
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
James Glassman
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Arianna Huffington
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Debbie Schlussel
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


Making a daughter
a campaign asset


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- HILLARY CLINTON can't break out in her race for the Senate, and her handlers are close to despair that she ever will. Her fund raising is lagging, badly, and her husband, brought in last week, isn't helping much.

He only reminds the women of what a sap Hillary has been over the years, and saps don't make good senators. It's enough to make a lady long for a secret weapon.

That's what's behind the sudden emergence of first daughter Chelsea as a grown-up player.

American newspapers, and even American television outlets, are wary of saying so, obeying a hard rule of political coverage that you don't involve a candidate's children in even the most robust discussions of politics and policy. Not only that, Miss Clinton is by all accounts a lovely young woman — bright, responsible and serious — who inherited the best of her parents, not the worst. She's entitled to her privacy.

But the Clintons themselves, who have exploited everyone and everything else, are turning now to their only child to rescue Hillary.

London's Sunday Times reported over the weekend that certain diplomats have expressed irritation that the president is involving Chelsea in delicate affairs of state.

"The first sighting of the new Chelsea Clinton was three months ago during a state visit to Washington by Morocco's

King Mohammed VI," the Sunday Times reported.

"Accompanying her father from the west wing of the White House, she strode confidently down the red carpet and placed a hand on the back of Princess Lalla, gently guiding the king's sister towards Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state.

"It was the first time the 20-year-old Stanford University student had stood in for her mother, Hillary, at an official function. . . .

"Chelsea clearly enjoyed the experience. After a series of public appearances at her father's side, however, her prominent role as inseparable presidential escort is beginning to prompt questions about the level of her security clearance and access to confidential information.

"Chelsea has done much more than merely deliberate the burning issues of American foreign policy: she has been present for every big decision the president has made since June."

In fact, Chelsea has been photographed in intense conversations with Mrs. Albright and Sandy Berger, her father's national-security adviser, as if she was part of the small presidential detail dispatched to assist the president on his visit to Colombia, where he talked up the $1.3 billion American assist to Colombia's bumbling war on drugs.

A week earlier, Chelsea was seen huddling with Mr. Berger and top aides in Nigeria, and the White House, a little embarrassed, had to shoot down accounts that she played "an active role" in American efforts to halt the tribal warfare between the Tutsis in the government and the Hutu rebels in Burundi. She was said to have worked with her father aboard Air Force One, rewriting his speech to the Nigerian parliament.

Before that, Israeli officials complained that Chelsea had inappropriately monopolized the dinner-table conversation between her father and Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister, during the unsuccessful Camp David talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

You can't blame Chelsea. The president needs a hostess, his wife having abandoned the White House to pursue a job of her own, and daughters have filled in for presidents before. And what serious college junior, who after all has learned more than a sophomore, wouldn't take advantage of such an opportunity to live history while her friends at Stanford are only studying it. Chelsea is not exactly Amy Carter, who took her book of tales of Peter Rabbit to table at a state dinner at the White House. But you can't blame diplomats and officials of other governments, either, for feeling irritation at not knowing exactly what to make of it.

The Clintons know, of course, that criticism of Chelsea will be muted, if there is criticism at all. By taking her public, after guarding her childhood privacy so well for so long, they are creating a valuable asset, an inner tube thrown to a drowning woman, for her mother in New York.

"Chelsea is the respectable Clinton," says a Democratic consultant not connected to the campaign, "and she connects with the suburban housewives who detest her father and feel only embarrassed pity for her mother. Chelsea was the glue that held the family together during the Monica Lewinsky fiasco, and nobody will begrudge her a little excitement now."

No doubt. The risk to the ambitions of her parents is that New Yorkers will regard the exploitation of Chelsea as more cheap Clinton politics, and resent it enough to vote for someone else.


JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

Up

09/04/00: A footnote to the lie: How he beats the rap
08/30/00: Unbearable lightness of a cyberjournal
08/21/00: Clinton chickens on AlGore's roost
08/16/00: The long goodbye to California's cash
08/09/00: Innocence by proxy is a risky scheme
08/07/00: After insulin shock, an authentic rouser
08/02/00: When it gets hard not to get a little giddy
07/31/00: George W.'s legions of summer soldiers
07/26/00: He's set a surprise --- or a trap for himself
07/24/00: How do you serve a turkey in August?
07/19/00: Would Hillary sling a lie about a slur?
07/17/00: Process, not peace, at a Velveeta summit
07/12/00: The Texas two-step, a nudge and a wink
07/10/00: The Great Mentioner and his busy season
07/05/00: No Mexican standoff in these results
07/03/00: Denting a few egos in the U.S. Senate
06/28/00: Bureaucracy amok! Punctuation in peril!
06/26/00: The water torture of American resolve
06/21/00: The happy hangman is a busy hangman
06/19/00: Dick Gephardt finds a Dixie dreamboat
06/14/00: Taking a byte out of innovation
06/12/00: 'Go away, little boy, you're bothering us'
06/07/00: When a little envy is painful to watch
06/05/00: Fire and thunder, bubble and squeak
05/31/00: South of the border, politics is pepper
05/26/00: Running out of luck with home folks
05/24/00: The heart says no, but the head says yes
05/22/00: A fine opportunity to set an example
05/17/00: The Sunday school for Republicans
05/15/00: Hillary's surrogate for telling tall tales
05/10/00: Listening to the voice of an authentic man
05/08/00: First a lot of bluster, then the retreat
05/02/00: Good news for Rudy, bad news for Hillary
04/28/00: The long goodbye to Elian's boyhood
04/25/00: Spooked by Castro, Bubba blinks
04/14/00: One flag down and two memorials to go
04/11/00: Consistency finds a jewel in Janet Reno
04/07/00: Here's the good word (and it's in English)
04/04/00: When bureaucrats mock the courts
03/28/00: How Hollywood sets the virtual table
03/24/00: Dissing a president can ruin a whole day
03/20/00: When shame begets the painful insult
03/14/00: The risky business of making an apology
03/10/00: The pouters bugging a weary John McCain
03/07/00: When all good things (sob) come to an end

© 2000 Wes Pruden