Chelsea Clinton Will Skip Classes for Campaign Trail

Chelsea Clinton is spending the coming academic quarter away from Stanford University, where she was to begin her senior year, to live in the White House and help her mother’s campaign for the Senate in New York, her father said Friday.

“She’s already got way more credits than she needs to graduate and she wants to be with her mother and me for these last few months of our time together,” President Clinton said.

White House spokeswoman Nanda Chitre said that the president was referring to the less than six months he has remaining in the White House.

Clinton said his daughter has spent more than one-third of her life in the White House “and she wants to have some more days there. She wants to be able to help her mother.”

“And she wants to be able to keep company with her father, which is always a surprising thing when your children grow up and they want to spend time with you,” the president said. “I think [First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton] and I are immensely gratified by that.”

“It’s been a great comfort to Hillary and me to have her around more,” the president said of his daughter, who was in Maryland at Camp David during the Middle East peace talks and accompanied her father to the Group of Eight summit in Okinawa, Japan.

The president said Chelsea, 20, expects to graduate on time with her class in the spring.