Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine (31 page)

“She enrolled in NYU and then she didn’t like that,” says a person who knows Chelsea well. “And then she enrolled in Columbia, and didn’t like that. And then she went back to NYU. She couldn’t figure out what to do with her life.”

In describing her personality, a source uses the same words often attributed to her father—
exhausting
. She’s ambitious, working hard to get whatever it is that she wants, letting nothing stand in her way.

Eventually Chelsea settled for a life in New York City, where her famous name must have helped her jumpstart a career in the business world. She’d begin at the premier consulting company McKinsey & Company, where she made an estimated $120,000 a year as a starting salary.
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Clinton was the youngest recruit to her McKinsey class and was hired at the same level as consultants with MBA degrees.
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By 2006, she’d leave that job and head to Wall Street to work for the hedge fund Avenue Capital.
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Her boss there was Clinton donor Marc Lasry, who’s estimated to be worth $1.7 billion.
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For many years Chelsea eschewed involvement in her parents’ endeavors. One source tells me of the time her father was having heart surgery. Asked to pitch in at the Clinton Foundation, Chelsea refused. “She wanted nothing to do with it,” the source says. “She made that pretty clear to everybody for many, many years.”

Then, suddenly, she did.

Chelsea made her first foray into public life during her mother’s run for president in 2008. Initially her involvement came during her vacation time, but then her role became enhanced. Hillary enjoyed having Chelsea with her on the campaign trail and Chelsea proved an effective and fiercely protective advisor.

Borrowing the trademark spin of her mother, always publicly reluctant to enter the political fray, Chelsea told
Time
magazine that campaigning for her mother was “not something I’d ever expected to do.” In the same interview, Chelsea demonstrated a knack for seamless grandstanding. “Then I literally found myself in New Hampshire after she won the primary, and I just thought, ‘I can’t go back to work. I need to go tell whomever will listen why I so strongly believe in her, as a daughter, as a young woman, as an American, as a self-identified progressive.’”
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She quit her job at the investment firm and went on the trail fulltime, still surrounded by a cocoon of Clinton aides shielding her from the press. (Sometimes, as in the case with David Shuster, she’d have to shield herself from the press’s advances.)

It was there, in front of crowds large and small, that she began to find her public voice—at least in part. She made the case to Americans that her mom would be a great next president. “I went out on the campaign and I answered questions about my mom and why I so fundamentally believed in her. And sometimes it would be two people and sometimes it’d be 20,000 people. I did more than 400 events in 40 states in about 5 months. And through that process, I really understood why politics was so important and why . . . everyone needed to participate and have their voices heard at the ballot box. And so at this point in my life, what that deep belief has translated into is talking about why I think it’s so critical that people register to vote, and then vote,” she’d explain years later.
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But to onlookers trying to figure out who she was, the voice did not appear to be authentically hers—since she was acting as a surrogate for her mother. They still had no clear idea who she was and what she believed in, other than her mom’s political fortunes. Her own outlook on the world went unrevealed—and though she was a strong, passionate, and forceful advocate for her mother, she was only that. They believed they had no sense of her inner core.

Not that most outsiders seem to care. Chelsea is a beloved celebrity, though not everyone is sure why.

“The most ridiculous thing I ever saw was after Hillary’s campaign was over—
HuffPo
wanted to have ‘who is the most likely first woman president?’” says a longtime Clinton associate, who was shocked to see the name Chelsea Clinton on the list. “She’s just right out of college. Why?!? Just because she’s got their name? She’s suddenly someone you should mention in the first-female-president conversation because she’s their daughter? She’s not accomplished anything.”

Chelsea still wears the scars of growing up in the White House, and displays them whenever it suits her purposes. In the runup to the presidential reelection of Barack Obama, a calm Chelsea in an animal print dress, with the length of her arms showing and straight hair flipped out, charmed a New York City crowd.

“She and I actually have something in common,” Chelsea told the crowd, referring to Sandra Fluke, the former Georgetown law student who was criticized after testifying on Capitol Hill about the need for healthcare coverage for contraception. “We both have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh.” The crowd laughed, and participants on the stage—all women—joined in and began to clap.

“Thank you, thank you,” Chelsea said, reveling. “Yes. I do also believe if you have the right type of enemies you’re doing something correct.” More light laughter.

“She was thirty, I was thirteen.” The crowd groaned. “It’s true, actually. In 1993, he said, and I’m grateful I don’t remember the exact phrasing, but something like, You may know that the Clintons have a cat ‘Sox’ in the White House, they also have a dog. And then he put a picture of me on the screen.”

Chelsea began to nod. “And yet thankfully I had grown up in public life. And knew that having thick skin was a survival skill,” she said, then turned, visibly saddened, toward Sandra Fluke.

“But, Sandra, you have reacted with such nobility to everything that has happened and clearly have chosen to empower yourself over what has happened and not become disempowered by it.”
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The truth about the once shy and awkward Chelsea Clinton is that as close as she is to Hillary, Chelsea is tip-to-tail her daddy’s little girl. She’s politically attuned and immensely influential in her parents’ decision making—more so, these days, than any other aide around the former president and secretary of state. Indeed, it’s quite possible that there is no one more integral to Hillary Clinton’s decision of whether to run for president than Chelsea herself. That is a scary thought for longtime Clinton supporters. A friend of Paul Begala says the Clinton loyalist has previously expressed his dislike for Chelsea and thinks she is not the sweet girl image she projects.

A former associate who left ClintonWorld amicably calls Chelsea tremendously coddled and entitled. “It bothers the shit out of me that everyone thinks she’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

This perception, which revised the earlier view of Chelsea as an innocent naïf, was shared by other observers.

A journalist accompanying Chelsea and Hillary to Italy in July 1994 recalls that the visitors’ section of Pompeii was completely shut down so Chelsea and her mother could have a private visit. That’s the kind of world (in some ways, through no fault of her own) the young woman has grown accustomed to.

“Nothing seems very authentic,” a close observer says. That may be because her image is managed by a slick, high-powered PR firm in New York, Rubenstein Public Relations, and because Chelsea surrounds herself with a tight circle of loyalists, one more impenetrable than either of her parents’. Like her mother, she can’t seem to let people go. To add to the boundary-less weirdness that is the hallmark of her family, Chelsea’s married ex-boyfriend hangs around as part of her entourage, sometimes attending family functions with her.

That would be Jeremy Kane, a former White House intern, who dated Chelsea for about a year and a half in college. The fact that she’d date a White House intern has led some to say, “Like father, like daughter,” a clear dig at her father also being engaged romantically with another intern.
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She’d also be linked to Rhodes scholar Ian Klaus, an author of a book on Kurdistan, and even, somewhat outlandishly, to Hollywood actor Ben Affleck. “Chelsea came very close to exiting the White House without a Hollywood controversy on her hands, but when she and her father were mere weeks from leaving office—and the U.S. was captivated by the undecided presidential election—tabloids began circulating rumors that Ms. Clinton had ignited an affair with Hollywood heartthrob Ben Affleck, who had recently ended his relationship with Gwyneth Paltrow,” reported the
Daily Beast
.
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It’s perhaps not surprising that Chelsea Clinton has had a series of well-paying jobs, and that doors have opened for her due to her famous name. A sore spot with many observers is her lucrative gig with NBC, which hired her in 2011 for a reported large sum to profile people who are “Making a Difference” through volunteerism in their communities. This didn't sit well with everybody. A former Clinton staffer says, “Think about all the real journalists out there who are struggling, who have been working for ages to do this.”

Clinton’s biggest feature was an embarrassing interview she conducted with the insurance company GEICO’s mascot—an animated gecko. It resulted in mockery across the Internet, as bloggers derided Chelsea digging up the GEICO gecko’s supposed yearbook photo. The bit was hardly worthy of a journalist, let alone a high-profile correspondent like Chelsea.

“TV critics have not been impressed with Chelsea Clinton’s reporting skills at NBC. This certainly won’t change after Friday’s
Rock Center
, wherein the former presidential daughter actually interviewed—wait for it!—the GEICO gecko,” wrote one conservative media critic.
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“For some background—in case you’re actually interested!—the segment was about various commercial personalities such as the Old Spice guy, the ATT guy, and, of course, the GEICO gecko. Great get, huh?” asked the critic, who called Chelsea’s interview style “amateurish” and credited her famous parents and “friends in high places” with getting her “such a plum position.”

It’s not just Chelsea’s conservative critics—liberals haven’t been too kind either. “[R]ight now, we’re stuck in another awkward Chelsea Clinton phase, a kind of perpetual sheltered adolescence, still getting to know you after all these years. And who wants to watch that?” a
BuzzFeed
reporter dared, reporting that she’s not well liked or highly regarded in the NBC family.

“The days of Chelsea having it both ways are over. It’s one thing to want your total privacy, and stay totally private; it’s another thing to want your total privacy while reaping all the rewards and privileges that contemporary celebrity has to offer,” the
BuzzFeed
reporter announced.
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Following her parents’ lead, Chelsea chose a partner around whom rumors and conspiracies seem to endlessly circle. In the summer of 2010, at the age of thirty, she married Marc Mezvinsky. The two were friends at Stanford, and they don’t appear to have started dating until many years later. It’s likely their somewhat similar family lives played a role in bringing them together.

Like Chelsea, Marc—whom the
New York Post
called “youthfully dashing,” with “wavy hair” and a “lanky frame”—is the child of Democratic politicians.
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His mother is Marjorie Margolies (formerly Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky), a one-term Democratic congresswoman from Pennsylvania, who, it’s often said, lost her reelection campaign because she was a bigger fan of President Clinton than the rest of her district. (She voted for Clinton’s tax increases, against the wishes of her constituents.) Marc’s father is Edward M. Mezvinsky, a two-term Democratic congressman from Iowa who pleaded guilty to stealing $10 million from investors and tried to use his son’s relationship with Chelsea Clinton to ease prosecutors away from pursuing his case. It didn’t work, and the elder Mezvinsky spent five years in prison.
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Marc Mezvinsky is an investment banker himself, and started his own fund in April 2012 with the help of Clinton benefactors. “He is using [his father-in-law] to go to conferences or dinners or lunches with potential investors” and “hitting them up to invest in [Marc’s] funds.” If Doug Band could be marginalized, there would be a potential vacancy for a new surrogate son: Chelsea’s husband, Marc.

In the fall of 2011, Bill, Hillary, Chelsea, and Marc met in Little Rock to dedicate the Bill Clinton Presidential Park Bridge. Completed with an infusion of $10 million from the Clinton Foundation, the bridge was an obvious play on one of the former president’s best-known lines during his 1996 reelection campaign: “I want to build a bridge to the 21st century.”

As the quartet was about to make their way before the cameras at the dedication ceremony, Chelsea stopped and turned to her husband, with whom she’d celebrated her first anniversary the previous June.

“Stay here,” she told him, urging him out of the camera shot. “You’re not a Clinton.”

Chelsea is said to be an adherent to the view espoused by many other senior Democrats—and advanced by Bill and his aides—that he is a changed man now. In his midsixties and hoping to be a grandpa, the lecherous Bill of the 1990s is a thing of old. A former aide tells me Chelsea is oblivious to the truth that her father “is still fucking around.”

Veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum once recalled a moment in the 1990s when Clinton brought a woman to the home of prominent D.C. socialite Pamela Harriman and spent the night with her. “Pamela was hardly a prude,” Shrum noted, “but she was angry with Clinton; it was reckless.”
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By 2013, Shrum was a believer in the Bill the Redeemed storyline. “I think the recklessness is the past,” he says to me. “I don’t think that’s true anymore.”

Throughout Barack Obama’s first term, as Hillary Clinton maintained her statesmanlike persona and subsisted on a government salary—as secretary of state, she earned $186,600 per year—Bill’s money-raising efforts continued. His speeches were well received and well compensated. (He even brought George W. Bush in on the act, who throughout his own presidency had fretted about not having enough money.) His foundation was flourishing. And now he and his right-hand man Doug Band had a new moneymaking scheme—a company called Teneo. It caught Chelsea Clinton’s attention.