Chelsea Clinton introduces Hillary at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. (Reuters photo: Jim Young)

Against Chelsea Clinton

Hasn’t Bill Clinton been fellated thoroughly enough?

Nina Burleigh spoke for a certain variety of 1990s-style feminist when she famously said that “American women should be lining up” — on their knees — in order to express their gratitude to Bill Clinton for “keeping theocracy off our backs.”

You all remember how close we were to theocracy back in the 1990s: California banned smoking in all bars, Chris Farley died of a cocaine-and-opiates overdose, Barry Switzer got canned . . . and . . . nothing like a theocracy was anywhere to be seen, heard of, or smelt. As much as the Democrats tried to cast Ken Starr as a modern-day Roger Chillingworth (if not a Torquemada), Bill Clinton wasn’t in trouble for making the White House interns strap on their presidential kneepads: He was in trouble for perjury, an offense for which he was later obliged to surrender his law license. Clinton was guilty of everything he was accused of, and more.


But he beat two Republicans when Democrats thought they were never going to win the presidency again, and he brought the Reagan era to an end. He did not actually do a hell of a lot as president — he just surfed the long wave of prosperity that had kicked off in the early 1980s — and much of what he did do was to enact Republican priorities: NAFTA (Republicans used to believe in free enterprise — look it up, kids!) and, grudgingly, welfare reform. He bitterly complained in private that he had come into office hoping to be Jack Kennedy but had been obliged to become Dwight Eisenhower.

But politics is not about policy. Clinton won, Clinton was slick, and Clinton made fools out of Republicans and high-profile right-wing critics. He provided American progressives with all they really want out of a politician: emotional validation. (Hey, Trump voters!) And so Democrats loved him — deeply, madly, and, in many cases, to the point of abasing themselves.



Miss Burleigh’s suggestion was not enough. Not nearly. Rather than send Bill Clinton into his dotage with a generous allowance of Viagra and interns, they gave his wife — his batty, corrupt, inept, corrupt, feckless, corrupt, preening, unbearable, corrupt, condescending, and corrupt wife — the Senate seat being vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the last good Democrat. She was elected to represent the state of New York in the Senate when she did not even live there, leading Moynihan to wryly praise her “Illinois-Arkansas enthusiasm.”

She did not do very much in the Senate, though she did manage to acquire a nice real-estate portfolio, including a Chappaqua house with a pool big enough to dock Marco Rubio’s boat. The Senate is a perfectly nice place to be. They don’t expect much of you there — ask Patty Murray. You can make little speeches, and shunt great roaring streams of federal money into the service of your hobbies and the pockets of your friends.

There ain’t no cure for love, and Democrats just can’t quit the Big Creep.


It’s a good gig, being a senator. But that was not a big enough tribute to the Big Creep. And it wasn’t enough for Mrs. Creep, either, who had endured so much public humiliation in the cause of making NPR listeners feel good about themselves. She was running for president from the day she was seated in the Senate. But she could not close the deal. First, she got whipped in the primaries by a nobody back-bencher who answered her Illinois-Arkansas enthusiasm with his own Hawaii-Illinois cunning, in effect telling Democratic primary voters: “Okay, I’ll see your white woman and raise you a black guy.” So Mrs. Clinton became secretary of state. She was not very good at that.


And then, after barely edging out Comrade Muppet in the 2016 primary, she lost to a half-literate game-show host.

But, as the poet said, there ain’t no cure for love, and Democrats just can’t quit the Big Creep.

So they’ve turned to the Little Creep.


Chelsea Clinton, most recently lionized on the cover of Variety, is a 37-year-old multi-millionaire who has never uttered an interesting word about any subject at any time during the course of her life. Judging from the evidence of her public statements, she has never had an original thought — it isn’t clear that she has had a thought at all. In tribute to her parents, she was given a series of lucrative sinecures, producing a smattering of sophomoric videos for NBC at a salary of $600,000 a year. She later went more formally into the family business, leaving her fake job at NBC for a fake job in her parents’ fake charity. She gave interviews about how she just couldn’t get interested in money and bought a $10 million Manhattan apartment that stretches for the better part of a city block.

And, since her mother’s most recent foray into ignominious defeat, she has been inescapable: magazine covers, fawning interviews, talk of running her in New York’s 17th congressional district. The Democrats are doing their best to make Chelsea happen.

And, who knows, it might work. It would be tempting to write her off as a know-nothing rich kid who has made a living off her family connections while operating one of the world’s most truly asinine Twitter accounts, but . . . well, you know.

But, for Pete’s sake, stop it. Have a little self-respect, Democrats. Build Bill Clinton a statue or . . . whatever. Send him your daughters like a bunch of bone-in-the-nose primitives paying tribute to the tribal chieftain. But stop trying to inflict this empty-headed, grasping, sanctimonious, risible, simpering, saccharine little twerp on American public life.

It’s stupid enough out there.

– Kevin Williamson is National Review’s roving correspondent.

Editor’s Note: This piece originally mistakenly said that Chelsea Clinton appeared recently on the cover of Vanity Fair. In fact, it was Variety.

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