Meghan McCain and Chelsea Clinton: The Daughters’ Impact

Chelsea is the first to advance to the stage at Constitution Hall in Washington and it takes several minutes to quiet the audience’s burst of applause. “I believe I am the most enthusiastic supporter of my mother, but one could say here that I have many rivals,” she says offering the ovation that has been given to her to her mother.

In jeans and high heels, her appearance is trendy, but smart. Chelsea Clinton, at 28, is perfect for defusing the tension that has built among the public after arriving an hour late. She says she is “surprised at the number of people whose lives have been touched by the actions of her mother,” before reciting the more principal points of her speech. “I am convinced she [Hillary Clinton] is the most progressive and the best prepared to be the president that we need [right now]. I don’t believe it, I know it.” Her face illuminated by her pride, Hillary responds in the microphone to say “You’ve come to hear the best speech.”

It was necessary that the democratic candidate pass the [possible] elimination in Iowa so that her only child could come out from the shadows. Until then, the former first daughter had arrived at the white house at age 12 and was jealously protected form the pressure of the media.

Having received diplomas from Stanford and Oxford and employed by placement in New York, Chelsea has always cultivated an air of discretion [around herself]. She continues to not grant interviews. To a nine year old “apprentice” reporter who asked for an interview for her school paper, Chelsea replied, “Sorry, I don’t talk to the press, even if I find you cute.”

At the podium, she contents herself to offer a jazzed-up image of her mother, one that seeks to counterbalance the impart Barack Obama has had among the younger voters. David Shuster, a journalist at NBC, was shoved aside for having said the she was “placed in the game” by the campaign. Chelsea has some political fiber, but she is “more C-Span than MTV” noted Newsweek: she respects the script of the candidate and avoids any personal secrets. When a student recently asked her if the Monica Lewinsky affair had tarnished Hillary’s reputation, she replied dryly, “That is none of your business.”

Mccainblogette.com

Quite the opposite, there is Meghan McCain, 23 and freshly graduated with an Art History degree, who follows the electoral caravan of her father. That which interests her is the noise, the people, and the sartorial details. She does not show herself on the podiums, but she recounts the campaign in her blog, mcainblogette.com. There she posts videos and her favorite music. There she divulges “10 things about my mother you didn’t know,” and narrates her visit to the White House with Laura Bush and her visit with Chelsea Clinton who had “super cute shoes.”

With “her charm and her self-mockery” and boasted by the magazine GQ, this child of the West, natural and spontaneous, grown in Arizona, contributes to the jazzed-up image of the old senator. “She has become the queen of the siesta while father can never take one.”

Megan has a star tatooed on her foot, finds Obama “sexy” and does not hide that she voted for John Kerry in 2004. She considers herself, “independent, socially liberal, economically conservative,” and in “total agreement” with her father over the war in Iraq. “I am incapable of lying, she says. For him [Senator McCain] it’s the same.”

John McCain does not control the internet site of his daughter. But when one asks how, at 71, he can entice the younger voters, he responds, “In their reading of Meghan’s blog, it is excellent.” If the father is elected, the young rebel would continue to write at the White House and in the same tone. If mother wins, Chelsea will no longer be the hidden first daughter she once was.