What to expect when a Clinton is expecting

What to expect when a Clinton is expecting

mangaloretoday.com/ MDTV

New York, April 19, 2014: In some alternate universe, a distant political galaxy unlike our own, Chelsea Clinton might be able to have her first child quietly. No one would care about the size of her baby bump. If and when Hillary Rodham Clinton announces a presidential run, her status as a grandparent would receive exactly the same scrutiny as her male predecessors who were grandfathers.

 

That is not the country we live in. Here is what to expect now that Chelsea Clinton is expecting: Her child, due in the fall, will arrive just months before Hillary Clinton may announce her next run for president. Even non-famous women find that when they are pregnant, "your body becomes a public object," as Julia Cheiffetz, a book editor and new mother in New York, put it. So imagine what could happen to Chelsea Clinton, whose entry into motherhood could coincide with her family’s kickoff of a billion-dollar image-control campaign in which biography and family are central strategic assets. Most pregnant women make a birth plan for when they go into labor: what to pack, how to get to the hospital. Chelsea Clinton’s arrangements might involve disguises, private security consultants and public relations strategy.

Chelsea Clinton has been in the public eye for so long that she may be prepared for this kind of pregnancy. In 1992, at age 12, she was featured in the "Man from Hope" video broadcast at the Democratic convention, assuring voters about her father’s character in the face of accusations of marital misconduct. Her graduation party at Stanford included two receiving lines, one for those who wanted to meet her father, another for meeting her mother, a fellow student recalled. Her 2010 wedding drew so much attention that her parents had to turn it into a covert operation, barring cameras and keeping the location secret.

 

To share her family news, Chelsea Clinton could have issued a quiet written statement. Instead she made a surprise announcement at an event Thursday for her mother’s proto-campaign, a question-and-answer session with teenage girls.

"Marc and I are very excited that we have our first child arriving later this year," she said of her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, beaming as her mother sat beside her. "And I certainly feel all the better that she or he will grow up in a world full of so many strong young female leaders," she continued, wrapping her personal news in a larger message about putting women in charge.

How will the public view the prospect of a grandmother presidential candidate, a commander in chief who bounces a toddler one day and orders drone strikes the next? Does the word "grandmother" connote authority, durability and wisdom, or a less-flattering set of associations? Older candidates - Bob Dole, John McCain - have found their age an issue in recent presidential contests, and Republicans have already been trying to portray Hillary Clinton, 67, as too old for the job.

 

Women past 50 or 60 often say they feel invisible in their workplaces, but they are not Hillary Clinton, whose entry into national public life was marked by far less favorable news about her family. In 1992, she faced interview questions about her husband’s liaisons with other women. If she runs for the 2016 Democratic nomination, she could be asked far easier questions about having a toddler crawl under her desk, and keeping Cheerios in the small kitchen she once installed in the private presidential residence: a happy denouement to what was once a rocky family saga.

Being a grandmother also may lend reassuring maternal warmth to a politician who often struggled in 2008 over what gender messages to send. "Just by running for president you’re violating a lot of cultural assumptions about what women are like, so you have to work to shore up your compliance with female stereotypes," said Marianne Cooper, a sociologist at Stanford University.

Perhaps for that reason, mothers can be especially potent on the political stage. Kissing a stranger’s baby is one thing; cradling your own bundle of innocence and authenticity is another. Before Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy flamed out, she dazzled audiences by campaigning with her baby in her arms. (The pregnancy of her daughter Bristol Palin turned into a messier drama.)

On Wednesday night at a Fortune magazine event in New York, Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, charmed female executives by contrasting the toughness of her day job - negotiating with China and Russia on matters like Syria - with tenderness of her other job, raising her two young children.

She occasionally misses a call from President Barack Obama while bathing her children, she said, and she tries to tell her 5-year-old the truth about her work. "One of [my son’s] very dear friends was trying to take the toys he was playing with and my son said - and I never guessed he would be capable of this - ’You’re just like Putin!’" she said, taking a whack at the Russian leader from an unexpected angle. The audience howled in appreciation.

But in presidential politics, candidates who are grandmothers are still novel figures. In the end, Chelsea Clinton’s pregnancy could say very little new about babies and a lot about being a woman who is decades and decades older.