A second stint as first daughter?

If her mother manages to become the first female president of the US, Chelsea Clinton could be in a historic position: the first first child twice over

Asked which parent Chelsea Clinton most resembles, friends tick through the mother-daughter similarities. There is the habit of pre-empting questions by asking lots of them. The passionate interest in healthcare. The tendency to sound a bit scripted when talking about policy. The way both borrowed on family contacts to establish post-White-House careers, but won over skeptical colleagues with their diligence and enthusiasm.

And if her mother, Hillary Rodham Clinton, manages to become the first female president of the US, Chelsea could be in a historic, head-spinning position of her own: the first first child twice over.

She certainly brings experience to the job. At age 12, she appeared in Bill Clinton’s “Man From Hope” video, testifying to his fatherly virtues. During the Monica Lewinsky scandal six years later, she was photographed hand in hand with her parents, seemingly holding them together.

When Hillary ran for the Senate, her 20-year-old daughter crisscrossed New York by her side. Now, at 27, Chelsea is still clapping and beaming on her parents’ behalf, accompanying them on trips, fundraising and playing a more glamorous version of her lifelong role: model daughter.

But Chelsea now has her own life: a hedge fund job, a serious boyfriend, a tight circle of friends, and a permanent place setting on the New York party circuit. So far, Chelsea is more a character than a presence in the campaign, which seeks to portray Hillary as a strong yet nurturing force. Those familiar with the Clintons envision Chelsea as a strategic resource, not an ever-present voice.

Chelsea began college interested in medicine, which would have taken her away from her parents’ orbit, into long years of hospital training. Instead, after graduating with honors from Stanford University, she enrolled at Oxford University, which her father had attended as a Rhodes scholar.

After Oxford, Chelsea signed up with McKinsey, a consulting company known as an elite business training corps. She was the youngest in her class, hired at the same rank as those with MBA degrees. Last fall, she moved on, taking a job analysing investments at Avenue Capital Group, a hedge fund run by Marc Lasry, a loyal donor to Democratic causes.

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Chelsea seems acutely aware that others are always observing her; classmates at Stanford noticed that she was always in full make-up, as if she expected to be photographed at any moment. Recently, she exercised with a personal trainer who specialises in pageant contestants.

This time, Chelsea has a partner whose life is an uncanny mirror of her own. Marc Mezvinsky, who works at Goldman Sachs in New York, is also the child of two politician parents, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky and Edward M. Mezvinsky, both former members of Congress. And Marc survived a humiliating parental scandal, when his father pleaded guilty to swindling dozens of investors out of $10 million.