Still, Chelsea Clinton continued to tell it, even getting the woman's age wrong. (She was 35, not "younger than me," as Chelsea Clinton reported Saturday.)
"There was some talk in the media about whether it was true or whether it was not true," she said. "Her family has said it's true in the interim, but what matters to me in the following story is that no one ever doubted that it could be true in our country. So here's the story we heard . . . ."
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said Chelsea Clinton should be held accountable for her stories. This story, she said, was plausible, so the telling of it, with Chelsea's caveat, was acceptable.
"I don't think adult daughters are held to a different standard," Jamieson said.
Dramatic license or not, Chelsea Clinton is considered by the campaign to be one of her mother's most effective surrogates. Though her father is a bigger draw, former President Clinton's tendency to engage his wife's critics has backfired, costing her. Chelsea Clinton, on the other hand, never utters the word "Obama" in her appearances.
"She's doing a wonderful job speaking," said Laura Bradley, a 19-year-old Oregon State University student. "She knows so much. I'm feeling persuaded."
Campuses have been Barack Obama strongholds, so Clinton's youth is an asset. "I'm not that much older than you," she often says.
Her hair is long and highlighted blond. Her black flared jeans are tight, and her gray blazer nips at her small waist. She has a boyfriend, her own apartment and a terrier named Soren. (After the philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard.)
She stands very still while speaking, usually for an hour, and despite her poise occasionally slips into adolescent cadence, ending a statement with a question mark: "If you can't afford the healthcare plan that you think best meets your needs or your family's needs, you will be given a $3,500 tax credit?"
Mostly, her voice is low, slightly raspy like her dad's, and curiously monotone.
"She's very eloquent, but she's very flat," said Lauren Dillard, editor in chief of Oregon State University's newspaper, the Daily Barometer, as she listened under the vaulted ceilings of the student union's elegant lounge.
