GROWN-UP CHELSEA CLINTON EMERGES : PRESIDENTIAL DAUGHTER AT EASE AS SHE ASSUMES PUBLIC ROLE.

Byline: Muriel Dobbin Scripps-McClatchy Western Service

When Chelsea Clinton took off her ankle-length coat to display long, slim legs in a mini-skirt as she walked in the inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue this week, it underscored the coming of age of a president's daughter.

At 16, with her parents already fretting about her forthcoming departure for college, Chelsea has emerged from what was perhaps the most effective protective cocoon to be spun around a child of the White House.

The observant but shy 12-year-old who stayed within the shadow of her parents in 1992 has turned into a poised and self-confident teen-ager who stood up and yelled ``Hoo-ah! Hoo-ah!'' to rally a military audience in Bosnia last spring, then traded wisecracks about driving lessons with a soldier.

As Chelsea and her friends bounced from party to party during the recent inaugural celebrations, it was revealed that she has made Mr. Blackwell's best-dressed list.

Suddenly, Chelsea is in the spotlight from which she was sheltered for so long.

President Clinton and his wife have been criticized for just about everything except how they have brought up their child in the fishbowl atmosphere of the White House.

When it came to Chelsea, nobody ever accused the president of waffling. During his 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton drew the line of privacy not only at Chelsea, but even at her cat.

A shot of Socks the cat besieged by a gaggle of crouching photographers evoked a command from the then-candidate that Chelsea's pet was off limits. The lengths to which that edict was taken were demonstrated when a White House official later refused, on grounds of privacy, to disclose the gender of Socks.

The Clintons issued a public plea early in the first term that the privacy of their daughter should be preserved, and followed it up by imposing a news blackout about her. They were criticized for sending Chelsea to the exclusive Sidwell Friends private school, instead of a public school in Washington, but their daughter was left to study in peace, her schedule and her movements undogged except by her Secret Service detail.

Her school operates a privacy policy so firm that not even Chelsea's grade is disclosed. She is reportedly a conscientious student with special interest in history, math and science. She also loves to dance, and as a student at the Washington School of Ballet, has played a small role for the past three years in the company's ``Nutcracker,'' with her proud parents in the audience.

The president revealed that Chelsea has friends over for slumber parties at the White House. But it was only when she was in the company of her parents that Chelsea was publicly visible. The deliberate underplaying of her role as a presidential daughter reached the point that when she wanted to attend the State of the Union address last year, it was reported that she called her father's office to ask if there were extra tickets. Unsurprisingly, she got one, seated next to her mother.

She has given no interviews, the Clintons have offered virtually no information about her, and, even more remarkably, the press has gone along, making Chelsea perhaps the most protected child to grow up in the White House.

Longtime observers of Washington like Doug Bailey, president of the American Political Network, whose children also are students at Sidwell Friends School, commented, ``The Clintons did remarkably well in an almost impossible situation. What has happened to Chelsea is to the credit of her parents and of the press. She has been included in public events, yet remarkably sheltered so that she grew at her own pace, and clearly it has worked.''

Stephen Hess, a political analyst at Brookings Institution in Washington, compared the White House upbringing of Chelsea Clinton to that of Amy Carter, a shy 9-year-old when former President Jimmy Carter took office.

``Amy Carter was politically exploited,'' said Hess, recalling how the child was invited to state dinners where she sat reading a book, and how her father discussed his daughter's opinions on nuclear arms control at a presidential debate in 1980.

``The Clintons took the opposite approach,'' Hess said. ``Chelsea was at a very awkward age when she arrived at the White House and somehow they managed to give her a normal life in a very difficult setting. I think it helped that there seems to be genuine closeness among the three of them.''

In her book, ``It Takes a Village,'' Chelsea's mother acknowledged she was borrowing from the child-raising philosophy expressed by another well-known protective mother, the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

``If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much,'' the first lady wrote.

As Chelsea grew older, the parental ban on intrusion into her privacy remained in effect.

Asked by a television reporter what she would say if Chelsea came home and announced she was pregnant, her mother's response summed up the family attitude.

``I want to compliment you and other members of the press corps for permitting my daughter to have a private life,'' said the first lady, ``and if I were to answer that question in just the way you asked, I would be violating the very thing I've asked you to give her.''

In addition to cherishing Chelsea's privacy, her parents made a point of making room for her in their schedules. The president tried to have breakfast with her every morning, and calls from Chelsea or attendance at her school events, had top White House priority. Information leaked about Chelsea was innocuous, like her donation to her school's fund-raising auction two years ago when she offered, ``Take your time. Relax and enjoy an evening out on the town while this student baby-sits your children - Chelsea Clinton.''

Two families reportedly paid ``several hundred'' dollars each to hire Chelsea, and got her Secret Service escort thrown in for free.

Yet the Clintons lost no opportunity to publicly express their pride in their daughter. Chelsea was referred to more than half a dozen times when her mother spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last year.

Chelsea emerged as a personality rather than a polite presence over the past year. When she accompanied her mother on a 12-day goodwill tour of southern Asia, it was a trip that took them from palatial dinners to Mother Teresa's orphanage, a village square in Pakistan and a visit to the Taj Mahal. A special program of events was offered for the president's daughter, but she opted to follow her mother's schedule. Reporters covering the events were warned that Chelsea gave no interviews, answered no questions and would not be quoted. Her only public comment was at the Taj Mahal that she recalled ``was sort of an embodiment of the fairytale palace for me when I was little.''

But last spring, when Chelsea accompanied her mother on a visit to the troops in Bosnia, she burst forth as a young woman with a lot of self-confidence, a sense of humor, and an engaging presence reminiscent of the political personality of her father.

When a sergeant major who was the master of ceremonies at a show being put on for 1,000 soldiers turned to the president's daughter and asked slyly, ``Your name is Chelsea?'' she told him, ``Something like that.''

And when he followed up with a request that she help with a call to whip up the enthusiasm of the audience, Chelsea seized the microphone and twice let go with a lusty ``Hoo-ah!'' that got everyone's attention.

Asked by a soldier about the driving lessons she has been receiving from her father, Chelsea grinned and warned him, ``Beware if you come to D.C.''

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Photo

Photo: Chelsea Clinton has been spared the glare of the public eye by her protective parents, who want her to have a normal life.

Associated Press