She’s making all the right moves.
With the stealth of an environmentally responsible electric engine, this brainy, transplanted New Yorker is working overtime to make herself liked by the American people, while perfecting her hair, makeup and wardrobe.
But is the nation ready for another politician named Clinton — a poised woman with White House experience, a punishing vegan diet, and a marriage that’s attracted its fair share of gossip?
Clearly, I’m not talking about Hillary.
It’s Chelsea time.
Note that in 2011, rumors ran wild among the chattering class in Westchester County, where her parents have a place, that the inscrutable only child of former President Bill Clinton and ex-US Sen. and Secretary of State Hillary was eager to run for the congressional seat occupied by then-74-year-old Rep. Nita Lowey, who was said to be retiring. The talk was that Chelsea was urged to run by unnamed big-deal Democrats.
“People in the neighborhood were buzzing about it,’’ said Joseph Mercurio, a Democratic political consultant. “If you spotted a bright, articulate person with family connections, you might look at her. And I think she’s got good advice from her parents.”
Even if Chelsea did nothing to advance the chatter (Lowey ran for and won re-election in 2012; Chelsea’s spokesman denied she wanted the job), it was official. The Sphinx-like former first daughter had transformed into a brand.
Lately, Chelsea, who once avoided the media like space aliens, is letting it rip. Chelsea, who has no law degree but earned a master’s of philosophy from Oxford University, teased CNN in August that she might consider running for public office. Just “not now.” She told Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” that she’s steering clear of politics “for this point in my life.”
But her dad whacked open the door that Chelsea cracked. Bill told CNN’s Piers Morgan that Hillary should win the White House first. Then “over the long run, Chelsea.”
“She knows more than we do about everything,” he said.
Chelsea, 33, has long lived in the bubble of the political Witness Protection Program. She’s avoided eye contact with the media to the point where she blew off a 9-year-old Scholastic News reporter covering her mom’s presidential campaign in 2007, saying, “I don’t talk to the press, and that applies to you, unfortunately. Even though I think you’re cute.” The rejected munchkin just wanted to know if Bill Clinton would make a good first man.
But suddenly and without a press release, Chelsea is dropping the stuck-up act.
Ahead of the first anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, Chelsea materialized in the Rockaways in a hard hat to break ground on a house with volunteers from the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. She refused to answer questions from local reporters, but did make an actual statement.
“We are so excited to be doing this,” said Chelsea.
Then she made a startling true confession worthy of a reality-TV star. Chelsea told TV cook Rachael Ray last month that she got her first kiss from a boy, in his basement, during the time she lived in the White House.
And if the image of the formerly frizzy-haired Chelsea engaging in a consensual lip lock isn’t too much to process, she told Glamour magazine that her folks, particularly her mom, have put unrelenting pressure on Chelsea and her husband of three years, Marc Mezvinsky, 35, to make them grandparents.
She said 2014 will be “the Year of the Baby.”
Were we witnessing the opening act in the Selling of Chelsea?
Chelsea has never been battle-tested, mainly because the media always gave her a free pass — or else. MSNBC host David Schulte was hit with a two-week suspension in 2008 for saying Chelsea was “pimped out” by her mother’s presidential campaign. The remark, though tasteless, is light years milder than the crude female anatomical term an unpunished TV talker Bill Maher used to ridicule Republican Sarah Palin.
How will Chelsea handle her first inevitable misogynistic attack?
Chelsea’s marriage drew attention when, shortly after her 2010 fairy-tale nuptials, the bride’s investment-banker hubby bolted for a time to live as a ski bum in Wyoming. But a few months ago, the couple bought a $10.5 million, four-bedroom Manhattan apartment, complete with room for a nursery.
Chelsea is “very much the yin to my yang,” Mezvinsky told Vogue magazine last year.
Chelsea also drew grief after she was named an NBC correspondent in 2011, covering gauzy feature stories. With her famous name and wooden delivery, Chelsea publicly leapfrogged over more deserving reporters stuck in the journalistic boonies of Bangor or Little Rock.
But now, it’s all hard hats and baby love.
“If there is a political future for Chelsea Clinton, she’s going about it in the proper way,’’ said Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf.
“By creating celebrity, by not being an obnoxious, entitled presidential daughter. Rather, she is perceived as someone kind of nice.’’
Are we seeing the creation of a Clinton dynasty? I’d bet money on it.
Judge these judges
New Yorkers should stop and question exactly what was eating Manhattan federal Judge Shira Scheindlin.
Ruling on a case involving the police practice of stop, question and frisk, Scheindlin did worse than unfairly accuse cops of engaging in unconstitutional racial profiling. The judge demonstrated a potent kind of anti-cop bias, a panel of the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.
The good news is that, at least for now, cops won’t be hobbled by Scheindlin-dictated reforms, like the appointment of federal monitors to watch over the NYPD.
The bad news is that the judge replacing Scheindlin on the case, Analisa Torres, has in the past made rulings hostile to stop-and-frisk.
Here we go again.
Back on that slippery Slope
They won’t quit. Park Slope Food Co-op foodies who tried unsuccessfully last year to ban the sale of Israeli-made products at the grocery emporium are holding a forum by a leading foe of Israel and America, Rashid Khalidi.
A former spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, Khalidi, now a professor at Columbia University, is to hawk his new book, “Brothers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East,’’ in a Brooklyn event Wednesday night co-sponsored by Park Slope Food Coop Members for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.
People of good conscience are urged to schedule last-minute dental appointments that evening.
It’s high time
Is Mayor Bloomberg promoting pot-smoking by youngsters? The City Council passed a Bloomberg-backed bill upping the age for buying tobacco and e-cigarettes from 18 to 21 — but failed to ban the sale of bongs to young ones.
So kids, you’ll just have to wait until you hit 21 before putting tobacco in that hookah.
Only $11M? Poor Kobe!
Hobbled by injury, NBA star Kobe Bryant was paid $24,363,044 last week by the Lakers in one gigantic lump sum, the LA Times reported. (He gets another $6.1 million in chump change over the rest of the season under his contract.) But the taxman stands to take a 55 percent bite, reducing Kobe’s haul to as little as $11 million, reports ESPN. Even Kobe has problems.