continuing
Chelsea joined the board of the Clinton Foundation a few years ago and has since stepped up her role in several ways (in July, she went to Africa with her father on a foundation mission). She now plays a vital part in both the Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Health Access Initiative. She is no doubt learning from her father what works. But she is also teaching him a thing or two. One night, over dinner at Cheddar’s, Chelsea mentions that a lot of her male friends are gay. “It was something that I wasn’t even aware of until Marc pointed it out,” she says. Observing the strength of those friendships—many of Chelsea’s friends spend every Thanksgiving with the Clintons at Chappaqua—was one of the key factors in changing Bill Clinton’s position on gay marriage. “Those conversations often start in families and then billow out into the community. Change is hard. And I was really proud of my dad.”
People around Chelsea have noticed a change in her, too. “As she’s been exposed to the foundation and to what her father’s doing with his post-presidential life,” says Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, “I think a light switched on: This is the legacy I’m going to inherit. To say it is an incredible one is an understatement. She now knows that in 20, 30 years, everything about her father’s legacy is in her hands. It’s going to be Chelsea’s responsibility to carry that torch. This is the core of what her grandmother encouraged her to do: embrace her inheritance.”
In many ways, she already has. Even the way she agreed to be interviewed—having a writer embedded for weeks—is the way she’s watched her parents do it for years. Let’s face it, she has their pace, if not yet their global platform. I ask her, Could you ever imagine running for public office? “Before my mom’s campaign I would have said no. Not because it was something I had thought a lot about but because people have been asking me that my whole life. Even during my father’s 1984 gubernatorial campaign, it was, Do you want to grow up and be governor one day? No. I am four. And also because I believe that there are many ways for each of us to play our part. For a very long time that’s what my mom did. And then she went into elected public life. Her life is a testament to the principle that there are many ways to serve.” She pauses. “And now I don’t know. . . . I mean, I have voted in every election that I have been qualified to vote in since I turned eighteen. I believe that engaging in the political process is part of being a good person. And I certainly believe that part of helping to build a better world is ensuring that we have political leaders who are committed to that premise. So if there were to be a point where it was something I felt called to do and I didn’t think there was someone who was sufficiently committed to building a healthier, more just, more equitable, more productive world? Then that would be a question I’d have to ask and answer.”
It’s old-home week in Little Rock: The Clintons are back in town. On a steamy Sunday in June, a full-scale friends-and-family reunion is about to get under way for the opening of an exhibition at the Presidential Library about Chelsea Clinton’s grandmothers, titled “Dorothy Howell Rodham & Virginia Clinton Kelley.” Naturally, it was her idea.
The William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum is a lot of things—a state-of-the-art archive, a tourist attraction with a restaurant and gift shop—but it is also a home. When the Clintons are here, they stay in the living quarters somewhere within the modernist slab of glass and granite that juts out over the Arkansas River. By noon, about 100 guests are beginning to pile up in the lobby, waiting for the private tour of the exhibition to begin. Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea suddenly appear, and every ion in the room gains a proton; the electrical charge is palpable. Chelsea is wearing a very tight, short presidential-blue Stella McCartney dress and nude Michael Kors platform pumps. When she spots Vic and Susan Fleming, the parents of Elizabeth, her childhood best friend, she runs at a full clip across the lobby and throws her arms around Mrs. Fleming, nearly knocking down the velvet rope.
The exhibition (which runs through November 25) is fascinating, offering up clues in miniature to what shaped the lives of the two women who shaped the lives of the two people who came together in the crazy-great political marriage of all time and forever changed the lives of everyone around them. As I wandered through, I thought of something that a Chelsea intimate said to me: “My perception is that her dad is a superhuman who is doing extraordinary things, and that her mom is like an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. He just feels like he’s operating on a different plane. And the thing that I have always loved so much about Hillary is that it doesn’t feel like she’s operating on a different plane, but you are just overwhelmed by how much she’s been able to accomplish walking the streets with the rest of us.” Just like her daughter.
There is a reception for about 500 people in the library’s Great Hall, during which the family comes out onstage. Hil lary, ebullient in purple, and Bill, silvery and sleek, holding hands. There are Hil lary’s brothers, looking a little uncomfortable: Tony Rodham, with his wife, Megan, their two young children, Fiona and Simon, and his older son, Zach; and Hugh Rodham and his wife, Maria. Chelsea steps up to the podium and works her magic. “This is a really emotional week for my family. Last week would have been both my grandmother Dorothy’s ninety-third birthday and my grandmother Virginia’s eighty-ninth birthday. . . . Both of my grandmothers faced adversity that I think is almost unimaginable in the twenty-first century, and yet both transcended adversity . . . by the choices that they made and not the choices that others made for them.” She lets drop another Mom’s-impatient-for-grandchildren joke. Hillary rolls her eyes while her husband wraps her up in a big Bill Clinton hug. When their daughter turns around, Hil lary says, “Good job, Chels!” and embraces her—an affectionate bunch, this dynasty of three. Obviously these family moments have taken on even greater importance now that Chelsea’s grown. As Chelsea says, “We make a real effort to see each other and be together and talk on the phone.” (“I will tell you,” says Huma Abedin, “the moment in Hillary’s life when she is happiest is when there’s a call from Chelsea. Even if we are in the middle of a horrible, horrible meeting, she’ll answer the phone and say, ‘HIII, CHELSEA!’ It’s just the best sound.”)
The private reception in the library’s restaurant, Forty Two, spills out onto a big deck that overlooks the sun setting on the Arkansas River. There are margaritas and Mexican food, and the whole affair takes on the air of a big family barbecue, with children running around, folks getting tipsy, and everyone going back for seconds. Chelsea is holding court with her friends, among them interior designer Ryan Lawson and Dan Baer, a deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the U.S. Department of State. Hillary is regaling them with stories. The conversation turns to the fact that Dorothy had a real knack for making a beautiful home, which then leads to the revelation that Hillary’s guilty pleasure, the thing she does when she really wants to take her mind off her work, is to sit with a big pile of interior-design magazines and flip through them. She also admits that she enjoys some of the reality shows on the subject. And then she says, “Chelsea, did I ever tell you about the first time I actually spoke to Lindsey Graham? He came up to me one day on the floor of the Senate and said, ‘Guess who called me?’ ‘Who?’ I said. ‘A producer from the television show Trading Spaces. They want you and I to trade places. What do you say?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think so!’ ” At that, she puts her finger to her dimpled cheek and exaggeratedly twists it a couple of times and then dramatically turns on her heel and saunters away. Everyone laughs while Chelsea convulses in a silent paroxysm of laughter and disbelief, with a look on her face that says, my mom!
As the evening wears on, Chelsea’s five-year-old cousin Fiona has begun pulling flowers out of the centerpieces. “I am picking flowers!” she says, which gives Chelsea no end of joy. “Only a little girl who lives in Washington, D.C., would think that you ‘picked’ flowers from centerpieces.” Suddenly she notices that Fiona has been stuffing the flowers into the pockets of her uncle Bill’s suit. “Ohhhhh, my Goood,” says Chelsea, with her hands over her mouth, “look at my father. She’s made him a boutonniere!” At that, Bill ambles over and announces to the group that he is tired and is retiring upstairs. He waits for Hillary to finish her conversation, and the two of them disappear down a long hallway.
Chelsea, on the other hand, has decided to go out with her friends for a drink. A dozen or so head to the Capitol Hotel bar, about ten blocks away. In a giddy mood, Chelsea orders a scotch, and the group parties into the wee hours. “It’s just kind of her reality,” says Lurie when I ask about the juxtaposition of Chelsea’s life to that of her parents, with their staff and security and private jets. “She lives in the world. But because she has always grown up with her parents having staff around, it’s not strange for her. She transitions seamlessly out of those spaces. Let’s put it this way: When the motorcade pulls away, there is no air let out of her world.”
When the night comes to an end, everyone piles out into the street and says their goodbyes. A driver is waiting to take Chelsea Clinton back to the library—home to her parents in Little Rock.
Chelsea joined the board of the Clinton Foundation a few years ago and has since stepped up her role in several ways (in July, she went to Africa with her father on a foundation mission). She now plays a vital part in both the Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Health Access Initiative. She is no doubt learning from her father what works. But she is also teaching him a thing or two. One night, over dinner at Cheddar’s, Chelsea mentions that a lot of her male friends are gay. “It was something that I wasn’t even aware of until Marc pointed it out,” she says. Observing the strength of those friendships—many of Chelsea’s friends spend every Thanksgiving with the Clintons at Chappaqua—was one of the key factors in changing Bill Clinton’s position on gay marriage. “Those conversations often start in families and then billow out into the community. Change is hard. And I was really proud of my dad.”
People around Chelsea have noticed a change in her, too. “As she’s been exposed to the foundation and to what her father’s doing with his post-presidential life,” says Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, “I think a light switched on: This is the legacy I’m going to inherit. To say it is an incredible one is an understatement. She now knows that in 20, 30 years, everything about her father’s legacy is in her hands. It’s going to be Chelsea’s responsibility to carry that torch. This is the core of what her grandmother encouraged her to do: embrace her inheritance.”
In many ways, she already has. Even the way she agreed to be interviewed—having a writer embedded for weeks—is the way she’s watched her parents do it for years. Let’s face it, she has their pace, if not yet their global platform. I ask her, Could you ever imagine running for public office? “Before my mom’s campaign I would have said no. Not because it was something I had thought a lot about but because people have been asking me that my whole life. Even during my father’s 1984 gubernatorial campaign, it was, Do you want to grow up and be governor one day? No. I am four. And also because I believe that there are many ways for each of us to play our part. For a very long time that’s what my mom did. And then she went into elected public life. Her life is a testament to the principle that there are many ways to serve.” She pauses. “And now I don’t know. . . . I mean, I have voted in every election that I have been qualified to vote in since I turned eighteen. I believe that engaging in the political process is part of being a good person. And I certainly believe that part of helping to build a better world is ensuring that we have political leaders who are committed to that premise. So if there were to be a point where it was something I felt called to do and I didn’t think there was someone who was sufficiently committed to building a healthier, more just, more equitable, more productive world? Then that would be a question I’d have to ask and answer.”
It’s old-home week in Little Rock: The Clintons are back in town. On a steamy Sunday in June, a full-scale friends-and-family reunion is about to get under way for the opening of an exhibition at the Presidential Library about Chelsea Clinton’s grandmothers, titled “Dorothy Howell Rodham & Virginia Clinton Kelley.” Naturally, it was her idea.
The William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum is a lot of things—a state-of-the-art archive, a tourist attraction with a restaurant and gift shop—but it is also a home. When the Clintons are here, they stay in the living quarters somewhere within the modernist slab of glass and granite that juts out over the Arkansas River. By noon, about 100 guests are beginning to pile up in the lobby, waiting for the private tour of the exhibition to begin. Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea suddenly appear, and every ion in the room gains a proton; the electrical charge is palpable. Chelsea is wearing a very tight, short presidential-blue Stella McCartney dress and nude Michael Kors platform pumps. When she spots Vic and Susan Fleming, the parents of Elizabeth, her childhood best friend, she runs at a full clip across the lobby and throws her arms around Mrs. Fleming, nearly knocking down the velvet rope.
The exhibition (which runs through November 25) is fascinating, offering up clues in miniature to what shaped the lives of the two women who shaped the lives of the two people who came together in the crazy-great political marriage of all time and forever changed the lives of everyone around them. As I wandered through, I thought of something that a Chelsea intimate said to me: “My perception is that her dad is a superhuman who is doing extraordinary things, and that her mom is like an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. He just feels like he’s operating on a different plane. And the thing that I have always loved so much about Hillary is that it doesn’t feel like she’s operating on a different plane, but you are just overwhelmed by how much she’s been able to accomplish walking the streets with the rest of us.” Just like her daughter.
There is a reception for about 500 people in the library’s Great Hall, during which the family comes out onstage. Hil lary, ebullient in purple, and Bill, silvery and sleek, holding hands. There are Hil lary’s brothers, looking a little uncomfortable: Tony Rodham, with his wife, Megan, their two young children, Fiona and Simon, and his older son, Zach; and Hugh Rodham and his wife, Maria. Chelsea steps up to the podium and works her magic. “This is a really emotional week for my family. Last week would have been both my grandmother Dorothy’s ninety-third birthday and my grandmother Virginia’s eighty-ninth birthday. . . . Both of my grandmothers faced adversity that I think is almost unimaginable in the twenty-first century, and yet both transcended adversity . . . by the choices that they made and not the choices that others made for them.” She lets drop another Mom’s-impatient-for-grandchildren joke. Hillary rolls her eyes while her husband wraps her up in a big Bill Clinton hug. When their daughter turns around, Hil lary says, “Good job, Chels!” and embraces her—an affectionate bunch, this dynasty of three. Obviously these family moments have taken on even greater importance now that Chelsea’s grown. As Chelsea says, “We make a real effort to see each other and be together and talk on the phone.” (“I will tell you,” says Huma Abedin, “the moment in Hillary’s life when she is happiest is when there’s a call from Chelsea. Even if we are in the middle of a horrible, horrible meeting, she’ll answer the phone and say, ‘HIII, CHELSEA!’ It’s just the best sound.”)
The private reception in the library’s restaurant, Forty Two, spills out onto a big deck that overlooks the sun setting on the Arkansas River. There are margaritas and Mexican food, and the whole affair takes on the air of a big family barbecue, with children running around, folks getting tipsy, and everyone going back for seconds. Chelsea is holding court with her friends, among them interior designer Ryan Lawson and Dan Baer, a deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the U.S. Department of State. Hillary is regaling them with stories. The conversation turns to the fact that Dorothy had a real knack for making a beautiful home, which then leads to the revelation that Hillary’s guilty pleasure, the thing she does when she really wants to take her mind off her work, is to sit with a big pile of interior-design magazines and flip through them. She also admits that she enjoys some of the reality shows on the subject. And then she says, “Chelsea, did I ever tell you about the first time I actually spoke to Lindsey Graham? He came up to me one day on the floor of the Senate and said, ‘Guess who called me?’ ‘Who?’ I said. ‘A producer from the television show Trading Spaces. They want you and I to trade places. What do you say?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think so!’ ” At that, she puts her finger to her dimpled cheek and exaggeratedly twists it a couple of times and then dramatically turns on her heel and saunters away. Everyone laughs while Chelsea convulses in a silent paroxysm of laughter and disbelief, with a look on her face that says, my mom!
As the evening wears on, Chelsea’s five-year-old cousin Fiona has begun pulling flowers out of the centerpieces. “I am picking flowers!” she says, which gives Chelsea no end of joy. “Only a little girl who lives in Washington, D.C., would think that you ‘picked’ flowers from centerpieces.” Suddenly she notices that Fiona has been stuffing the flowers into the pockets of her uncle Bill’s suit. “Ohhhhh, my Goood,” says Chelsea, with her hands over her mouth, “look at my father. She’s made him a boutonniere!” At that, Bill ambles over and announces to the group that he is tired and is retiring upstairs. He waits for Hillary to finish her conversation, and the two of them disappear down a long hallway.
Chelsea, on the other hand, has decided to go out with her friends for a drink. A dozen or so head to the Capitol Hotel bar, about ten blocks away. In a giddy mood, Chelsea orders a scotch, and the group parties into the wee hours. “It’s just kind of her reality,” says Lurie when I ask about the juxtaposition of Chelsea’s life to that of her parents, with their staff and security and private jets. “She lives in the world. But because she has always grown up with her parents having staff around, it’s not strange for her. She transitions seamlessly out of those spaces. Let’s put it this way: When the motorcade pulls away, there is no air let out of her world.”
When the night comes to an end, everyone piles out into the street and says their goodbyes. A driver is waiting to take Chelsea Clinton back to the library—home to her parents in Little Rock.
