People Changes the Tone
First Family news veers from Clinton damage control to Bush damage.

By Tim Graham, White House correspondent, World magazine & former director of media analysis at the Media Research Center
June 12, 2001 9:00 a.m.

OPS! THEY DID IT AGAIN," blares People's cover this week about "the Bush girls' latest scrape" over a picture of Jenna and Barbara Bush. People pooh-poohs administration anger, saying they'll get used to the spotlight. The story on the Bush family is relatively mild, paired with another feature on other presidential children. The stories are merely an excuse for the cover, which will blare about the naughty daughters for a week from every supermarket and drugstore.

With the Bushes, People's editors are clearly announcing there's going to be less sensitivity to the family and more sensitivity to sales numbers. They announced their new standard in this passage:

The Clintons made it clear that Chelsea was off-limits, and the Bushes asked that the same consideration be extended to Jenna and Barbara. Still, the president is the ultimate political celebrity, and the hunger for news of his family is great. "One day you're at the convention like one big happy family, and the children are used to show that the parents understand what families go through," says historian Douglas Brinkley. "Then something like [the Bush twins' incident] happens, and now you want us to ignore them after you've introduced them to the whole world. That's not going to work."

By the standard of Brinkley (whose last major work of history pined for the exemplary public service of James Earl Carter), the Bush twins should be completely invisible, and should never show up at public events where their father in nominated for president or inaugurated as president. But the Clintons regularly exploited Chelsea before the mass circulation of People magazine, and by that standard, should gain much more scrutiny than the publicity-phobic Bush daughters. At least, readers might conclude, the sophomoric behavior was coming from 19-year-old daughters, not 52-year-old fathers.

The Clinton years were a glorious time according to People magazine, and either Bill or Hillary was always making their annual "Most Intriguing People" list. People publisher Ann Y. Moore was a Democratic donor. Early Clinton stories were often cowritten by Nina Burleigh, who would later join Time and infamously declare that she would have gladly performed sexual favors on Bill Clinton for keeping abortion legal.

The exploitation of Chelsea began in their pages in the July 20, 1992 issue, where the Clintons laid together in a hammock for happy summer-sun publicity photos. In between the photos is a now-ridiculous interview with Clinton, including his thoughts on faith: "The older you are the more you have an unconscious drive to try to act according to your convictions and feelings. I think that people, whether they know it or not, always want more integrity in their life." As for Hillary's greatest achievement, he declared "I am most proud of how she's raised Chelsea."

"At the center of their lives is Chelsea," proclaimed People. "The bright student who has skipped one grade already, she is a sweet-natured eighth-grader who plays volleyball for her school and softball for a dentist-sponsored team called the Molar Rollers…Chelsea, who called the checkout-counter tabloids 'silly,' is embarrassed by her dad only at ball games when he yells too loud for her team and jumps up and down." You can read that now, and think "oh Chelsea, just wait."

But as it carried its always-syrupy coverage of Chelsea into the muck of Monicagate, People suggested the opposite, that Chelsea wasn't so naive. In February of 1998, we were told "She's been holding her head high," and Jesse Jackson, her spiritual counselor, told the magazine "Her maturity insulates her...she's not fragile." A year later, People turned to ABC's Dr. Nancy Snyderman, a frequent guest host of Good Morning America and a longtime friend of Hillary. "Chelsea has been her mother's strength…She been bred for it." Naivete wouldn't sell after too many Clinton profiles (including People's) carried the old Clinton chestnut that they'd prepared six-year Chelsea for all the awful lies Republicans would tell her about her tomcatting daddy.

The Clinton White House protested the Hillary and Chelsea cover on the February 15, 1999 issue: "We deeply regret and are profoundly saddened by the decision of People magazine to print a cover story featuring our daughter, Chelsea…. Unfortunately, despite personal appeals with respect to her privacy and her security from her parents, People magazine has chosen to run the story. We can only hope that the media will continue its policy of restraint with respect to our daughter."

But the protests rang hollow when, unlike the current Bush-daughters cover, the 3,400-word cover story was chock full of quotes from Clinton fans, who weren't in the habit of breathing a word to reporters without explicit permission. In its mawkish tradition, People raved about the Hillary-Chelsea bond: "In the process, they have strengthened their relationship that began with the birth of a desperately wanted child, grew in the shadow of a sometimes troubled marriage, and was nurtured by a mother whose daughter is not only the focus of her emotional life, but also her proudest legacy."

The mother and daughter had used their suffering to deepen their faith. "Chelsea often prays with her mother, having chosen Hillary's Methodist faith over her Baptist father's. Now in the wake of this current crisis, 'both Hillary and Chelsea have this inner glow,' says Rev. Don Jones, who was Hillary's childhood pastor from suburban Chicago. 'It's as if they've both reached their higher selves.'" For People, the Clinton women were never more virtuous then when they'd stood by their man with every calculated public-relations move, including this People cover story surrounding the Senate impeachment vote and preceding the coming Juanita Broaddrick rape story.

People was even hailing Chelsea just last July, with 700 words of syrup about her hostessing a state dinner in Hillary's place as she ran for the Senate. "We were all raving about her poise," said PBS-made multimillionaire Ken Burns. " I was happy to be invited for dinner with the King, but the highlight of the night was being around Chelsea. She has her father's all-encompassing intelligence. She is scary bright."

The White House is finding that it doesn't have to campaign to change the tone at People magazine. They've already changed their First Family approach from Clinton damage control to Bush damage.