Chelsea Clinton Finds Her Voice
Daughter Evolves From Quiet Supporter to Self-Assured Campaigner
By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 10, 2008; A01
....In light of a string of setbacks for her mother's campaign, including impolitic remarks by her father, Chelsea is arguably the most seamless part of the struggling Clinton operation. After spending the first year of the presidential campaign watching quietly from New York, and after a lifetime of relatively little public exposure, she now maintains a schedule of public appearances to rival her parents' -- an event at Villanova University on Thursday will be her 100th college campus appearance. The once and perhaps future first daughter is branching out in ways that the Clinton campaign -- which practically had to beg the candidate to allow her to appear in Iowa late last year -- never imagined. She regularly calls donors to thank them for contributions, an important task usually reserved for her parents; she records automated telephone calls to voters; and this week she posted a "welcome note" on her Facebook page, launching her first real effort to use the networking Web site on her mother's behalf....
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Clinton has declined interviews; only a few authorized insiders are allowed to talk about her; she is even shielded by her mother at difficult moments as the campaign has tried to use her wattage to attract votes without exposing her to the rigors, such as talking with the news media, that most adult public figures expect. That has produced some hostility between her and reporters, and led to criticism that she is trying to have it both ways....
In public, Clinton displays her mother's memory, wit and mannerisms -- and can look and act so much like her that audience members frequently call her "Hillary." Privately, she shows the same sharp instincts as her father and the same seemingly inexhaustible capacity for campaigning....
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has won many of the states that have been Chelsea targets, but what is known within the campaign as the "Chelsea effect" has been her ability to limit Obama's margins of victory -- such as in Vermont, where she was the only Clinton to campaign and where Obama did not exceed the 62.5 percent popular-vote threshold that would have earned him two more delegates. Hillary Clinton has made inroads among younger voters in a few states since the first contest, in Iowa on Jan. 3, when she was trounced in part because that demographic supported Obama so strongly. She ran evenly with Obama among under-30 voters in Massachusetts and California, and she won them in Arkansas....
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Like her mother, Clinton has a flair for wonkish details and academic-sounding words -- proposals for "incentivizing" corporations, doubling family education tax credits and introducing "green vehicular bonds" to automakers all roll off her tongue. Rarely does she duck a substantive question; after hearing her speak recently at an assisted-living home in Bensalem, a suburb of Philadelphia, several of the elderly residents said they were stunned by her command of health-care policy detail. But the sensational questions and commentary have drawn the most attention....Besides Clinton's answers to questions about Lewinsky and impeachment, one other recent response also generated some attention. Asked if she thought her mother would be a better president than her father, she said: "I don't take anything for granted, but hopefully with Pennsylvania's help she will be our next president. And yes, I do think she'll be a better president."...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/09/AR2008040903945_pf.html