THE WHITE HOUSE'S UNTROUBLED TEEN

By MARGARET CARLSON

One of the persistent rumors in Washington this summer was that Chelsea Clinton would be making her speaking debut at the Democratic Convention. The New York Times reported that she had been pressing for a role and that the White House was considering it. What better way to get prime-time coverage than to roll out your best-kept secret, a truly new voice? And what better way to trump the Doles' mantra--my family values are better than your family values--than to show off a poised, well-mannered teenager?

But it's not going to happen, no matter how big the Republican Convention bounce or how desperate the Democrats' need to entice jaded network anchors. Chelsea, who has attended only one State dinner, will ride the train to Chicago. She's no longer the vulnerable 12-year-old who walked into Madison Square Garden with her parents in 1992, when she was so protected that most people were surprised to discover the Clintons had a child. But at 16 she is still too young to be exposed to the Princess Di treatment--a Barbara Walters special, MTV, the cover of Seventeen--that might ensue if she were to come within range of a microphone. When asked about the rumor, the President told TIME, "Chelsea hasn't asked to play a part, and I wouldn't have let her if she had."

The press, for its part, has generally observed a nonaggression pact. Other than a nasty reference on Saturday Night Live and one on Rush Limbaugh's TV show, Chelsea has been left to lead a normal life. Even tabloids like the Weekly World News, which bannered Hillary's adoption of an alien baby, have resisted sending paparazzi to stalk the First Child.

Yet just this month Chelsea got a small taste of gotcha journalism. In the midst of a summer of building houses in Appalachia with her church group and taking ballet lessons, the Sidwell Friends senior went off with her mother the first week in August to tour Amherst, Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Wellesley and Yale. One evening they dined at the Spoleto Restaurant in Northampton, Massachusetts. Two glasses of wine were ordered. The pasta was barely digested before the local paper reported that the underage Chelsea had been drinking. For two days the Boston airwaves and papers buzzed with Chardonnaygate. The state's Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission launched an inquiry. Finally, the newspaper conceded there had been a "misunderstanding." In fact, a White House aide along for the trip had one glass and Hillary the second glass. Chelsea drank water.

The press behaved better when Chelsea accompanied her mother to South Asia in 1995--the first time most reporters got to see the First Daughter up close, having agreed not to ambush her. While many children of the highly placed are attention-mongering monsters or sullen recluses, Chelsea came across during grueling hours of travel as relaxed and friendly, informed without being a smarty-pants, gracious even when sitting cross-legged in a 100[degree] tent for an hour in India with bamboo weavers. She seemed to love her mother, of course, but also to like her, in a way that can't be faked. At Mother Teresa's orphanage, Chelsea picked up a baby and grew alarmed when the little girl started crying. She then did what daughters have always done--looked at her mother at the next crib and began to bob up and down exactly as she did. The most vocal presidential critics concede the Clintons have raised an exceptional child.

Back in Washington, Chelsea does what most teenagers do. Although she has access to the White House bowling alley and movie theater (where she and her friends are required to sweep up the popcorn), she goes most of the time to the local Cineplex. She spends the night at friends' houses, and they spend the night at hers. For her 16th birthday a crowd of friends went to Camp David and played Paintball in camouflage. As for her first date, there's no confirmation of when that occurred, but Chelsea was spotted one recent Saturday afternoon at La Tomate, an Italian restaurant a few blocks from the White House, with "a clean-cut young man about her age," according to the owner, who offered, "I was really impressed. She was very well behaved--and I'm a Republican."

Chelsea aside, anytime the Doles play the family-values card, they are betting that divorce and remarriage wipe the slate clean and stop the questions--that suddenly leaving your marriage and asking for an "emergency" divorce, as Dole did from his first wife (when his daughter was 17), is morally equivalent if not superior to sticking out the pain in your marriage and keeping a family together, as the Clintons did. It wasn't that long ago that Adlai Stevenson suffered as a presidential candidate because he was divorced. Now, being divorced gives you a political pass, and staying married gets you an inquisition. The Clintons' best rapid response to Republican attacks would be to put Chelsea on the podium. But part of the reason she's such a great kid, of course, is that they never have.