Chelsea on the questions she answers
Posted: Saturday, April 05, 2008 1:31 PM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli
HUNTINGTON, WV -- Chelsea Clinton made it clear yesterday that while she gladly takes questions from voters, she’d like to keep the focus on her mother’s policies, and little else.
During a stop at Marshall University, her second in West Virginia, Clinton was asked why she, as a public figure, felt she could “pick and choose” which questions she answers.
“Well, I'm happy to answer any questions that are about my mom's policies and plans,” she said. “I'm happy to answer any questions about why I think she would be not only the best candidate, but the best leader for our country. If you were to ask me what my favorite movie is, I don't think that's relevant to whether or not my mom would be a great president.”
Clinton, who had taken more than a dozen at this point, also called questions about “what my favorite color is or what I named my dog” as irrelevant. But Nathan Hamilton, a graduate student at Marshall who asked the question, said he was referring more to the former first daughter’s curt responses in past weeks to questions about the Lewinsky scandal, and not trivial matters like movies and colors.
“I just feel like if we're supposed to believe that her mother is going to be transparent and answer any question that she is asked, why does Chelsea not let the media ask her questions?” Hamilton said after the event. “Why would she not want to answer questions from her father's presidency?”
Hamilton said he came to the event interested to see whether questions for Clinton would be prescreened, so he did credit her for taking the question, even if he wasn’t happy with the answer. “I thought there'd be no way I could get even close enough to ask a question,” he said.
Clinton did answer many other questions on issues like health care, human rights, and the war in Iraq. She also somewhat bashfully thanked each of the three people who told her that she was a very attractive young woman. “Oh gosh,” she said after one such compliment. “I didn’t say I wanted flattery, I just said it was welcome.”
But she shirked another question at an earlier event in Montgomery, from a student at the West Virginia Institute of Technology who asked if Clinton “knew Jesus Christ” as her savior.
“Well, sir, I don’t think that my personal faith is at issue in this election,” she said. “I am a person of faith, I am a Christian, but I don’t think that that is an issue in this election.”
Later, however, she did open up a bit when asked for some “words of wisdom.”
“I really don’t think I’m all that wise... And I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up,” she said. “But my mother is my role model. And my mother has always told me a few things that have really mattered to me.”
Those lessons included the idea that “life is not about what happens to you, it’s about what you do with what happens to you,” and also what Clinton said was the “discipline of gratitude,” the idea that she should reflect on how she has been blessed and think of ways she could give back.
“Family and friends are ultimately what’s most important in life,” she concluded. “I don’t know if that’s wisdom, but those are certainly the lessons I try to live by.”
