Former US President could argue that family rule is well within the contrours of modern democracy the Democratic party stands for and US can elect his wife now and his daugther later. One does not know if Chelsea is in fact rehearsing for her own bid for Presidency down the line. In light of a string of setbacks for her mother's campaign, including impolitic remarks by her father, Chelsea has been arguably the most seamless part of the struggling Clinton operation. After spending the first year of the presidential campaign watching quietly from New York, and after a lifetime of relatively little public exposure, she now maintains a schedule of public appearances to rival her parents' - an event at Villanova University was her 100th college campus appearance.

In trying putting into her father Bill Clinton's shoes and with little fanfare the other day, Chelsea Clinton, quite unexpected by the audience, did what no one around her is ever supposed to do: She voluntarily brought up the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Speaking to a packed crowd of college students and recounting her mother's history of working with Republicans, the youngest Clinton talked for a minute about Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, who as a House member during the impeachment hearings against President Bill Clinton was "one of the people who prosecuted my father in the 1990s," she said. Not "someone you would think would be an ally for someone with the last name Clinton," the 28-year-old added wryly.

Chelsea perhaps is hopeful that she would herself also one day be the custodian of the White House and her speech smacks of sort of political maturity in a very early age about her knowledge in US political under-current. But if her self-assurance was a surprise, it was also part of a rapid evolution by Clinton, who has gone from a behind-the-scenes supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton to her mother's most effective surrogate, capable of engaging in detailed policy discussions as well as explaining how the senator from New York "misspoke" in describing landing once in Bosnia under sniper fire.

Miss Clinton bristled the first time she was questioned about Lewinsky, a person who almost drove her father away from the White House then, telling a college student last month, "I do not think that is any of your business." But since then she has learned to handle even that subject, refining her answer every time it has come up.