“If the American people are ready to elect [Hillary Clinton], I am," the 61-year-old Mr. Clinton told The Transom. "I’ll do whatever I’m asked to do. I hope they will, because I think it’ll be good for America and the world, but whatever happens…” And then he gave a slight shrug.

A little before 9 p.m., the 42nd president had just arrived at Tabla, on the edge of Madison Square Park, where he was hosting a party for Ian Klaus’ new book, Elvis Is Titanic: Classroom Tales from the Other Iraq (Knopf). Its 240 pages provide a detailed account of the author’s stint teaching U.S. history and English to students in Abril, Iraqi Kurdistan’s largest city.

Mr. Klaus, a 28-year-old graduate student of history at Harvard, became friendly with Mr. and Mrs. Clinton when he was famously dating their daughter Chelsea, whom he met when the two were studying at Oxford in 2001. (Mr. Klaus will not likely become First Gentleman Junior; the pair officially split in the fall of 2005.)

Mr. Clinton said he hopes that Mr. Klaus’ exemplary tenure in Iraq not only influences other American citizens, but that it will somehow affect the course of foreign policy on the world stage. “I do think it’s a very important part of what the United States, and in fact the whole global community, has to be doing,” Mr. Clinton explained, before a solemn pause. He went on, “I was glad to see the U.N. taking a new interest in finding a way to get back involved in Iraq, because whatever we do or don’t do, there’ll be continuing violence to establish some kind of coherent community. And at bottom, there are all these young people who have these dreams. All we have to do is create a set of dreams they can pursue that don’t require them to kill other people.”

He's already auditioning for the role! It seems Mr. Clinton also sees in the young author, who was wearing a dark suit over a black dress shirt and bright red stole, a trait that isn’t shared by many of his fellow nationals.

“We Americans are very good when we’re in the solutions business, and we’re not very good when we’re in the whining or complaining or division business,” he explained with his signature nod and squinty-eyed beam.

Mr. Clinton then went on to press flesh with other gushing guests, who included current Nobel Prize winner for literature Orhan Pamuk, several professorial types, a smattering of Mr. Klaus’ friends and family, his editor George Andreou, fellow writers and, yes, Chelsea Clinton, who appeared to be very affectionate with her onetime beau.Elvis Is Titanic’s dedication page reads: “To my mother and Chelsea, for understanding.”

Both Mr. Pamuk and Ms. Clinton refused to offer a comment to the Transom, the latter explaining matter-of-factly: “Oh, I don’t ever speak to the press.”

Another guest, Aaron Hicklin, the editor-in-chief of Out—America’s leading magazine for gay men—was anything but cagey. After being asked what it might be like to have a man playing second fiddle to a no-nonsense woman at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Mr. Hicklin grinned and began to chuckle sheepishly. “He’ll be the royal entertainer! He is American royalty, and I’ve always really loved the idea of the ‘first man,’” he explained, before adding: “I hope he takes great care in terms of, like, his wardrobe and his dinners and maybe produce a White House cookbook. But I’d really like to see a man kind of embracing his inner-woman in the White House, and kind of just showing that men can do that. I was very excited about the idea of ‘two for the price of one’—I know it’s a cliché, but you know.”

Any guesses about what kind of White House china Mr. Clinton might select if his wife is elected in 2008?

“Probably, for Bill, I think it’s going to be Crate and Barrel or something,” Mr. Hicklin quipped. “I don’t think he’s a china man. He’s not really got the class for the Royal Dalton/Wedgwood thing. I think it’s not going to be pastels; I think it’s going to be black and white for Bill, sadly. Something that doesn’t show the marks. You know, he’s practical like that—he doesn’t want stains to show.”

No, he doesn’t indeed.

The lot of the modern Presidential offspring is a hard one. What with the constant media scrutiny and the oppressive parental shadow, it's no surprise that the current crop is heavy on the shrill family feuding, boozing and Playboy pictorials. So it's all the more impressive that 23-year-old Chelsea Clinton, now a resident of-where else?-Chelsea, appears to be not just a functional citizen but someone with a potential for accomplishment that equals both her super-achieving parents.' But she has explored one area in which neither of them has succeeded: the private sector. At this very moment, odds are Ms. Clinton is toiling away in the East 52nd Street office of McKinsey and Co., where she has been working 80-hour weeks as a consultant since she moved to New York after finishing her master's in international relations at Oxford (like her father, of course, who was there as a Rhodes scholar). While most entry-level consultants are encouraged to wait a few years to pick a focus-the firm consults on every topic from consumer goods to corporate finance-Ms. Clinton has reportedly already chosen her field. She has staked her claim on-mamma mia!-health care.

Refined and no-nonsense and straight-haired these days (thanks, reportedly, to Frédéric Fekkai), Chelsea's taking home a $120,000 salary from the top-tier, London-based McKinsey and Co. And although with her health-care focus she may now appear to be headed down a path on which her mother famously blew a gasket in Washington in 1993, at the outset, the young Ms. Clinton appeared to be following more in her father's footsteps. Her senior honors thesis at Stanford-a 167-page tome about the 1998 Northern Ireland peace agreement, complete with an interview with President Clinton-was a precursor to her graduate work in international relations. As her father's official escort on Presidential trips to Africa and India and her mother's confidante on the 2000 campaign trail, she got world-class training for advising others or, perhaps, for her own foray into political office.

But since her father left office and her mother settled into her own, the young Ms. Clinton has carved out a life that is looking increasingly like something of her own making. She spent the summer of 2002 in Geneva, interning at the World Health Organization, and accompanied her father to the World Economic Forum discussion on global health issues the following January.

In England, she shed her gawky, adolescent look, dolled herself up in designer styles and became something of a regular in the British tabloids: famously photographed at a Versace couture show in Paris, flanked by Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow, appearing at an Elton John fête, frolicking at Oscar de la Renta's Dominican villa, Punto Cara. She embarked on a rather prosaic romance with a Rhodes Scholar and entertainment-equipment heir, Ian Klaus, who looks like a naughty cherub and (it has not gone unnoticed) bears some resemblance to her dad. Ms. Clinton and Mr. Klaus, 21 and 22, respectively, at the time, were the scandal of London for-congratulations!-drinking and dancing and smooching in public. Her schedule became so harried that she hired a personal assistant to arrange her appearances.

Since she arrived in New York last spring, the tabloids have been hot on her trail, but they haven't had much to work with. There was one October Daily News report of a heated lover's quarrel outside PM Lounge between Ms. Clinton and Mr. Klaus, but that's about as racy as things get where the former First Daughter is concerned. The next week, she was spotted taking her grandmother out to lunch in Little Rock, with Mr. Klaus in tow. Ms. Clinton picked up the check.

-Ronda Kaysen