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American Morning

Is Chelsea Clinton New JFK Jr.?

Aired May 10, 2002 - 08:49   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Have you seen Chelsea Clinton lately? It seems like only yesterday that she was the shy teenager, forever standing in the shadow of Bill and Hillary Clinton, her fiercely protective parents. But look at her now. At the age of 22, the sheltered first daughter has grown into a young woman who seems quite comfortable with her new public role, and with her transformation complete. A story in the new issue of "Vanity Fair" just out today says Chelsea Clinton has become a sex symbol. She is the new JFK Jr.

And Nancy Jo Sales from "Vanity Fair" joins us to talk more about the new Chelsea Clinton.

Good morning.

NANCY JO SALES, "VANITY FAIR": Hi.

ZAHN: How much cooperation did you get from her parents with this piece?

SALES: We didn't get much. They are historically very protective of Chelsea, and they tried to keep her out of the public eye throughout Bill's terms in the White House, and they were not too happy about this actually. Chelsea, we did encounter her in Oxford where she's a student, and she did talk to me briefly and did pose for a picture.

ZAHN: What did she tell you?

SALES: Not much. She was kind of excited to have her picture taken for the magazine.

ZAHN: If you look at this picture here, when she was at these fancy fashion shows in Milan, quite comfortable with the spotlight.

SALES: Yes, that's kind of the surprise of Chelsea Clinton that we've been seeing since her dad left office, is that she's no longer this, you know, shy, studious girl we all knew from when her dad was president. She's going to fashion shows, going to parties where lots of celebrities go, and she's kind of being seen in the company of people like Paul McCartney and Bianca Jagger, sort of British celebrities. And she sat at a Donatella Versace show next to Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna.

ZAHN: Good seat. And of course the criticism at Oxford by some her classmates is she just isn't doing the work. Now, I don't know whether you were able to verify that or not, but there seemed to be a concern on some of the faculty members' parts that maybe she wasn't doing enough time there and traveling too much.

SALES: There has been a rumor about that. It's not confirmed, however. I mean, I think she has both of her parents' intelligence genes, and I think she'll probably pull off her graduate studies there all right.

ZAHN: Now when it comes to this newfound relationship with a young man named Ian Clause, who happens to be a Rhodes scholar, and some say has some similarities to her father, they haven't been all that discrete, have they, in public?

SALES: They seem to be very much in love. And they are, you know, kind of putting it out there, as they say, in Oxford. In Oxford, I encountered them and saw them really wrapped up in each other in a cafe in Oxford.

ZAHN: They would call that snogging in England.

SALES: Yes, they're doing a lot of snogging. You can't really talk to an Oxford student who hasn't seen them snogging.

ZAHN: Now, let's reconcile your portrait of Chelsea in this piece with some of what she told us in a "Talk" magazine piece in the wake of September 11th, where she in a very personal way, described the trauma of fleeing downtown for safety and some of the political calculations you found in that piece.

SALES: Yes, I mean, that was when I first became really interested in Chelsea, when I read the now-defunct "Talk" magazine piece late last year, after September 11th. It seemed to me to be a piece written by someone who might have political ambitions.

ZAHN: Might have? She described in the situation where she was heading for a phone so she could get a hard line, talking about it impact of the Bush tax cuts, as hundreds of thousands of people were heading northward.

SALES: Which of course was her mother's obsession, the tax cuts, so you wonder how much it was, you know, kind of discussed with her parents. I would say that piece is very Clintonian in that it's very emotional, and yet kind of, you know, hits every kind of demographic in terms of who you might want to appeal to in terms of voters.

ZAHN: And she laid out the possibility of someday serving in public office.

SALES: She says at the end of it, I now know I will serve my country. I think we are going to be seeing her for a while.

ZAHN: New JFK Jr., the sex symbol here? That's what you're calling her? SALES: I don't know if she has the abs, but she does have the sort of focus of not only the American people, but the British people. The British press is covering her faithfully. She seems to be someone now who we want to know where she goes, what she does, who she's dating. She's become the first child of the moment, I would say.

ZAHN: I had the opportunity to spend a little bit of time with her during the Democratic convention, on that long, neverending train trip, and I actually found her quite comfortable in her skin. She was much younger.

SALES: She is incredibly, incredibly poised. I think that's also something she has learned from her parents. When we encountered her in Oxford, her rapport with our photographer Harry Benson and his assistant, it didn't seem like a 22-year-old. I man, I felt like I was looking at Hillary Clinton greeting constituents or something.

ZAHN: She's had a lot of exposure for that.

Nancy Jo Sales, good luck with the magazine and thanks for sharing the piece with us today. Appreciate it.

SALES: Thank you.

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