Tad Lincoln pulled well-reported pranks on the staff, Margaret Truman gave singing recitals, and John Kennedy Jr. was a toddling Oval Office photo-op. But until recently, the current White House kid was seldom seen—and never heard. "My concern," said a determined Hillary Clinton before the 1992 election, "is just giving her the chance to grow up as normally as possible." There were no pictures of Chelsea's Sweet 16 party or of her first driving lesson at Camp David. This year, though, Chelsea—poised, polite and politic—took her place on the world stage. At the Democratic National Convention in August, her proud father said, "Chelsea normally doesn't want to be involved in public affairs, but when she insisted on coming through the receiving line at the Irish state dinner, and when I looked up and saw her sitting at the State of the Union with Hillary, I thought to myself, 'You know, she really is growing up.' " Not too fast for her parents, though. When asked by a fellow teenager at a U.S. base in Germany, "Do they treat you normal at school?" Chelsea replied, "Pretty much." The Sidwell Friends senior's favorite subjects are science and history and she likes to attend school wrestling meets. She loves parties and ballet and often has friends sleep over at the White House. Close to her parents, she occasionally rests her head on her mother's shoulder in public. Chelsea is a National Merit Scholarship semifinalist and has toured Harvard, Brown, Wellesley and Princeton. Says Walter Cronkite's daughter Kathy author of a book profiling celebrity children: "She will have a breadth of experience and understanding that not very many people have. She appears to be a young woman who is going to be able to make the most of that."
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