Chelsea Hedges Her Bets

My junior AP Government students are currently working on a paper arguing which modern Presidential scandal was the most serious and dangerous to our political institutions: Watergate, Iran-Contra, or the Clinton impeachment.

We were discussing the Clinton scandal and the topic of Chelsea Clinton came up. One of my students wondered how Bill and Hilary could be parents and run for and be President simultaneously. I speculated, "I'm not sure it is really possible." For uber-ambitious people I have to think their career comes before their kids. My students were curious whatever happened to Chelsea and I told them she became an investment banker.

My first inclination was to scoff at her career choice. It would seem as the daughter of a First Family the world would be her oyster. Investment banking seems like a pretty uninspired choice. Matthew Yglesias had some choice words for the privileged elite who chose this path in this post:

Moneyquote:

I’ll avoid trying to put a label on it, but there’s a certain kind of person who walks into a room filled with people interested in working on Wall Street and people who do work on Wall Street and says to himself (and it’s no coincidence that it’s almost always himself) “these are the kind of people I want to align myself with.

As best I can tell, which admittedly is not that well, the tendency of unpleasant people to congregate in this particular line of work is cross-cultural. By far the most annoying people I met in Germany, for example, were finance guys in Frankfurt. Compared to politicians, non-financial businessmen, random bartenders, bus drivers, etc. they were horrible. Obviously this sort of thing is relative and probably if you ask a bunch of bankers they’ll say all the worst people from college went on to become glib political journalists or to teach in inner-city schools.

But after thinking about it I will hold back a little bit on my self righteous condemnation of her chosen career. She, more than anyone, was eye witness to two people (her parents) who are supposedly completely committed to the selfless and noble calling of public service. As a result, I doubt she romanticizes those who claim to want to save the world and pursue careers to fulfill this mission. She certainly has chosen a path that makes no claims to being on the side of angels. Given what she has witnessed and endured she probably is looking out for herself and I'm not sure I can blame her.