(Washington Insider Magazine) -As 2022 is just months away at this point in the year, it should surprise few that the reports and rumors are becoming louder regarding the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, and his prospect of seeking re-election in the 2024 Presidential Election. He is coming off of a loss to current-and-46th President of the United States, Joe Biden, after doing his best to downplay the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic fallout of the response to it, as well as his administration’s detached and frankly negligent response to both; while the death toll is catastrophic, and likely inaccurately low, his economic numbers are also easily the worst since the administration of Herbert Hoover, some 90 years ago.
Yet the former President will not go quietly into the night unless charges are brought up and successfully prosecuted and seems hellbent to win his second term in office. Reports suggested in the weeks and months preceding the election that the President privately feared and opined that he did not wish to be remembered as a single-term President or a “loser” as he actually referred to them as. But by his own definition, he is now a loser; how might he be redeemed, not from his disastrous four years as President, but from the disgrace of not winning another four years?
There is, apparently, an answer. This 21st Century Herbert Hoover, who some even argue, with his disdain for authority, is a 21st Century Andrew Jackson in many ways, apparently, wishes to be America’s 21st Century Grover Cleveland as well?
Grover Cleveland: A Short History and Analysis
Grover Cleveland was an interesting, quite nuanced man and President; he is also an American executive that is not taught in the 21st century as well as he was in the earlier portions of the 20th. In his classic book, “The American Political Tradition” by Professor Richard Hofstadter, the author does a brilliant job of explaining how, in the post-Civil War era, which extends to about 1896 or 1900, Cleveland really was the only truly, semi-noteworthy President, as well as the lone Democrat to be elected to the post between 1860 and 1908; Hofstadter disparages him often as well, as too conservative, as apathetic towards the cause and struggles of the common people, and as the chief executive who allowed both the Haymarket Riot and the Pullman Strike to become deadly with either the support or outright assistance of the federal government.
His story, nonetheless, is a fascinating and worthwhile one to tell, especially in relation to Donald Trump, who cannot be said to have been an “honest president”, as Cleveland was sometimes known as, by any stretch of the imagination. While Cleveland has character and intellectual flaws that can be judged harshly by the standards of our own time period, so does the recently elected and still living Donald Trump; when the contemporary President is appraised next to Cleveland, and can be judged as more grotesque and cruel than the man that was born nearly 200 years ago, it is clear that the two are by no means the same, despite sharing certain unsavory positions and feelings regarding American progress, and what exactly innovation in this nation can or should look like.
Descended from Moses Cleveland, the Revolutionary soldier whom the city of Cleveland was named to honor, Stephen Grover Cleveland was a bright and kind young boy and man by most accounts. Growing up in upstate New York from a young age, he came from humble means; when, following the death of his father, a Presbyterian minister, after working to help support his now widowed mother and siblings, Grover visited his maternal uncle in Buffalo, Lewis F. Allen, founder of the Erie Country Agricultural Society, whom, upon hearing the boys plans for the future, suggested his nephew stay with him while he looked for a law firm to take Grover in as a young law clerk. He would soon be accepted by the well-known Buffalo firm of the time, Rogers, Bowen & Rogers, at the request of his uncle and was promptly given his law lessons via study and practice, initially through William Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Laws of England.”
He would toil endlessly, learning and practicing, assisting the lawyers in as many ways as he was capable, and would become a useful and considerate lawyer, taking cases on that he felt were necessary even with little to no pay at times. And when the Civil War began, Grover, now taking care of his mother and siblings, felt it prudent to avoid service by legally paying for a replacement, making him the first President since James Buchannon to have no involvement, either politically or via military service, in the great conflict. Grover Cleveland would work as a lawyer, gaining fame in Buffalo for his legal knowledge, love of beer, good humor, and a general bachelor lifestyle. When that work wasn’t cutting it anymore, monetarily speaking, Grover won the vote to be the Sherrif of the town and, after that, to be Mayor of Buffalo; from there, his political ascension came more swift and remarkable still.
He rose through the ranks of local and state government in Buffalo, New York, in the late 1870s and early 1880s, in part because no one knew too much about him; as a clean, honest candidate in this respect, therefore, he was acceptable to a wider range of voters than many of his predecessors, contemporaries or successors. By 1884, he found himself, having previously won the governorship of New York, running in the Presidential Election against the legendary representative from Maine, James G Blaine, who apart from his legislative and dodgy financial dealings, is quite famous for having wished and worked for the Presidency for so many years, never to come so close as he did in 1884 against the former Sherriff of Buffalo; despite the real, disturbing, and very serious clamor about the potential love child of the suddenly-not-so “honest man” from Buffalo, Blaine could not escape peoples mounting and various suspicions regarding his own character or-lack-their-of. Grover Cleveland would win this election, taking the south solidly, as well as Indiana, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, and would be the first Democrat elected as President since the aforementioned James Buchannon some 28 years earlier.
While Cleveland was no Jacksonian Democrat, he was a staunch advocate for a more literal interpretation of much of the constitution and would govern both pragmatically at times, being a full proponent for civil service and tenement reform, while also siding with business interests over labor at other times. He did not hate labor per se, as his attempted, albeit naive, intervention in the Coal Strike of 1902 demonstrates to us, but simply could not think of how to support labor in a way that he could personally reconcile as constitutional from his position as the chief executive, in the same way as he was able to find to support American oligarchs, of whom he did not always like either; his behavior in the lead up to both the Haymarket Riot and the Pullman Strike are great stains upon each of his terms, to be sure. The letter that wealthy gilded age business legend Jay Gould sent to Cleveland upon his victory over Blaine, the candidate Gould had backed, was an interesting, ironic insight into how capital thought at that time, as well as the timbre of Cleveland, considering that the new President had been so recently applauded for having previously fought Mr. Gould during his time as the Governor of New York.
As the nation was growing through its own Industrial Revolution, and with it, the previously alluded to American Gilded Age, there was not a great amount of political innovation coming from the formerly radical Republican party; as two stories went, already in 1870, Iowa’s Republican Senator James W Grimes stated, regarding the Republican Party, that “I believe it is today the most corrupt and debauched political party that ever existed”, while former Secretary of State Walter Q Gresham stated around this time that the party was, “….an infernally corrupt concern.” Those old Republicans, yearning for the days before the party had, in our modern terminology, “sold out” to business and the oligarchic figures of commerce and industry would shortly be left in the past. And so, by the election of Cleveland, if only quite narrowly, the nation was ready for a change. His election was a sign of the desire for some type of progress, for answers regarding economic and political problems, like the tariff and silver questions, and for something to simply be different than it had been for 25 out of the prior 28 years.
And he was generally well respected, if not always well-liked. Historically speaking, he receives mixed grades and truly, despite the trappings that historians and biographers have given him, was not really very remarkable outside of the disturbing and unfortunate affair involving his first child. While biographers have keyed in on his folksy way of speaking, as well as the relatively kind, fair, and amicable timbre and nature that he held himself with in public and private, Pullman strikers, Haymarket activists, and the mother of Cleveland’s first child, Maria Halpin, would likely disagree with even this assessment and portrayal, however. He was economically conservative, opposed to both the tariff and free silver, as well as expansionist policies including even Hawaii. He did not think highly of black people either, or of Reconstruction, and while not explicitly vitriolic against them, was, to use a sweet, if definitely misguided phrase of one of his biographers, “a man of his era,” as if his era was not also full of remarkably forward-thinking intellectuals and the like.
His political actions, of which drew mixed reviews from those who suffered mightily through and during the panic of 1884 and its aftermath, were those of a man simply trying to maintain an order, not truly reimagine or redistribute power or privilege. While he entered the White House, like Buchanon before him, as a “Bachelor President,” of which was a popular image for him to cultivate, he would not remain that way for long as President and would marry the daughter of his now-dead best friend, Oscar Folsom, the beautiful, then-21-year-old, fresh-out-of-college Frances Folsom. She remains, to this day, the youngest first lady in the history of the United States; a charismatic woman, she legendarily told a member of the White House’s staff to keep things as they left it for when they returned in four years.
When Cleveland ran for his second term as President, unsure he actually wished to win it after the difficulty of the first term, he would find himself running up against the grandson of former, albeit briefly, President of the United States, General William Henry Harrison of the War of 1812 fame, Indiana Governor Benjamin Harrison; these men were the successors of Benjamin Harrison V, Declaration of Independence signee and “founding father” of the nation. Grover pushed discussion about reducing tariffs before the election, something his advisors warned him to hold off on until after the election was won, and he promptly refused, for the sake of honesty towards his constituency. In this Presidential election of 1888, without New York and Harrison’s native Indiana, Cleveland would not win the Electoral College, yet would, for the second time in a row, capture the national popular vote, becoming the second person to hold the popular vote in both a victorious and losing election, joining Andrew Jackson.
Benjamin Harrison would have a rather nondescript four-year Presidency, which, despite this historical pronouncement, featured very well known innovations such as the infamous McKinley Tariff Act, the addition of six states to the union, more than any other President, the annexation of the island of Hawaii, as well as the Sherman Antitrust Act. Perhaps his most interesting appointment included, as Civil Service Commissioner, a young man whom Grover Cleveland had already worked with previously and had great praise for, future New York Governor, American Vice President, and eventual President himself, Theodore Roosevelt; that Roosevelt did not much care for Harrison is, while amusing, hardly relevant. While other Republican’s, like a still relatively young Thomas Brackett Reed, as well as Henry Cabot Lodge, to name just two, didn’t much like Benjamin Harrison either, there was hardly a question of supporting him in the party climate they existed in at the time, which has seemingly changed little since then.
Yet while Harrison worked away at his “agenda,” of which consisted of the agenda of his party and not himself, not much liking the job either, Grover Cleveland continued to be regarded as a politically viable option for the Democrats in the lead up to the next election of 1892, especially when he began making statements regarding the actions of his successor relating to the tariff, territorial statehood, general monetary policy, and the Hawaiian question. Cleveland had not lost to Harrison by so much at all, having bested him in the popular vote, he simply needed New York, Indiana, or some other states that had chosen Harrison over him in the last election.
And as luck would have it for Grover Cleveland, despite that a whole bevy of states were brought into the Union during the preceding four years, many of those states, with small populations would vote, more often than not, for the third party Populist candidate, former Republican congressman James B Weaver. Meanwhile, Cleveland would strike not only into New York and Indiana, Harrison’s home state, but also into Illinois, Wisconsin, California, and districts in Michigan, Ohio, and North Dakota as well. With these victories culminating in his own overall Presidential victory, Grover Cleveland became additionally noteworthy and interesting to historians for a number of achievements. He would be the second President to win the popular vote in three elections, although Andrew Jackson won both the popular and electoral votes in all three of his, and would be, as previously noted, the first and only President of this nation, to this point, to serve two, non-consecutive Presidential terms in office.
This second term was also interesting in itself, for as Cleveland tried to move with the currents that were sweeping up the entire world, currents continued to move faster than he could. Having seen the country, shakily, through the lesser panic that began in 1884 previously, Cleveland again governed through the larger Panic and aftermath of 1893. At this point in American history, the pressures of the Gilded Age and Industrialization were simply becoming too heavy a burden for most people to overcome; striking was on the rise, frustrations were abounding, jingoes wished to annex more land than ever before, led by Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt, and the United Kingdom, led by Queen Victoria and, for the most part under, the last Peer to sit as Prime Minister, the famous Lord Salisbury, was disputing both the boundaries of Samoa in the Pacific, as well as between Venezuela and Guiana in South America.
Dealing with all of this, as well as the Pullman Strike, was surely wearisome for the President. By 1896, Cleveland was again happy to be through the ordeal and quite thrilled to spend time with his young wife and young children; his Democratic Party, meanwhile, would choose to go in an entirely different direction for three of the next four Presidential Elections. William Jennings Bryan was chosen to go up against Ohio’s William McKinley two times, before losing to William Howard Taft by a worse margin than he had lost the first two to McKinley by; New York State Judge Alton B Parker in 1904 was an exception to this 16 year run of course, yet he simply could not out Roosevelt Roosevelt in the end.
Grover Cleveland and some other Presidents: Historical Juxtapositions to Donald Trump
Grover Cleveland, as he was getting ready to retreat to a life of solitude with his young wife and small children, was tired, as Donald Trump was, and maybe still is, surely tired after his first term in office. Yet while Cleveland was a man of faults undoubtedly, he was much more practically in touch with them, as well as the thoughts of Americans of his era, outside of the labor movement at least. He, in fact, did not really wish to become President once, or even twice, so as to soothe his own, personal ambition, but because he felt a duty to serve if his fellow Americans wished for him to; privately, however, he spoke to confidantes about not even truly wishing to be installed into the position, both when he was still the Governor of New York, as well as when he was simply a former President after Benjamin Harrison beat him in the 1888 Presidential Election, because of the great responsibility of which he considered the position of American Presidency to be. The 45th President, as his consistent and thoroughly despicable antics and statements should illustrate, is not looking to win the Presidency with the aim of altruism, but out of rage and spite for the purposes of setting the United States back decades into the past diplomatically, socially, as well as culturally.
Returning back to Grover Cleveland for a moment, however, what he did was not an easy feat to accomplish, for a few reasons at the very least. There is an adage in American Politics that most everyone knows, as they even preached it in the months leading up to Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, that it is remarkably difficult in this day and age to stop a President from winning a second term in office. In the 20th century, the list of Presidents who failed to win another four years when they attempted to do so as the incumbent reads as a list of the President’s who routinely get skewered by Presidential Historians for one reason or another; they are, for the record, William Howard Taft in 1912, Herbert Hoover in 1932, Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George Herbert Walker Bush in 1992.
That Joe Biden was able to defeat Donald Trump, and therefore put him in this category as well, might be attributed to the 45th President’s handling of the pandemic, the economy, the society, or of those protestors who demonstrated against the America of which he wished to create. It was still accomplished, however. Joe Biden today, despite my frustrations with him in the realm of foreign policy and domestic policy vis-a-vis sanctions and the filibuster, has had a net favorable rating as President, until quite recently, something the 45th President had no experience with throughout his four years in office; if Joe Biden can complete his dual infrastructure and budget bills while perhaps adding some other, easily bi-partisan legislation like Federally legal Marijuana, it will be incredibly difficult, as the adage goes, to stop him from getting another four years in office, should he wish for them.
And while there is no adage regarding presidents reclaiming their office after being defeated, this is likely because it has only successfully happened once. Martin Van Buren attempted to reinvigorate his career many, many more times as a Democrat, and even under other political parties, in the hope of winning his second term in office after losing in the 1840 Presidential Election to the aforementioned William Henry Harrison. Grover Cleveland would be the only former President to turn the trick when he successfully did so in 1892, yet Theodore Roosevelt, too, much more famously than Van Buren, also attempted to win his third term, second election, to office after taking four years off. Having taken over for McKinley after his assassination in 1901, he felt uncomfortable, initially at least, with the idea of sitting for close to 12 consecutive years as President instead of choosing Taft as his successor after nearly eight.
In the 1912 Presidential Election, therefore, after growing frustrated with Taft’s Presidency, Roosevelt would decide to run a campaign, when finally he officially decided to, of which he called the “new nationalism,” that, after much analysis, can be explained as a strange amalgamation of old Rooseveltian policy ideas and notions, certain Progressive era ideas from himself, as well as both the Robert La Follette’s AND the Woodrow Wilson’s of the world, and some, what might be called, proto-fascist concepts. His short-lived Bullmoose Progressive Party would be the most successful third party in American Presidential Election history and would win more votes, both popular and electoral, than his old, formerly beloved Republican Party headed by Taft. Taft, consequently, would become the only candidate of either major party, to this point, to place in third behind a third-party candidate.
Therefore, if an additional American political adage were to be made today, it might be prudently stated that, once a President leaves office, one way or another, the odds of him returning for another term thereafter are nearly nonexistent. While Van Buren and Donald Trump left office with meager public support, and are generally held in poor regards, the same cannot be said regarding the 26th President. Theodore Roosevelt was quite beloved as the Chief Executive during his time in office, and likely could’ve easily won his second election and third term in office in 1908 had he chosen to run for it then; why then, just four years later, would the public choose the former President of Yale and Governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson instead?
The answer is more complicated than a one-sentence, or even one paragraph, appraisal. Roosevelt was in a strange place regarding his personal politics, as well as within the greater American polisphere itself. The pressure he was exerting on what might be referred to as the natural Progressive candidate and longtime Progressive champion, Wisconsin Senator Robert M La Follette Sr, would inevitably cause the politician to suffer a nervous breakdown while giving a speech in the lead up to the Presidential Election of 1912 and would do a real number on the Progressive movement as a national, political movement going forward. Roosevelt also became sick just before the election, and so, aside from his changing, uneven politics, his health was also uncertain at the time. When Roosevelt lost to Wilson, and it was suggested that he might be able to defeat him in another four years, Roosevelt quickly demonstrated that he did not really care about the party he had formed or the movement he had stolen from beneath La Follette; he declined to run again and denounced the party he had helped to create. This is certainly an easily imaginable scenario to occur to the Republican Party as well, once Trump finds no more personal, practical use for them, which might be sooner than many believe.
Donald Trump appears to be going for glory with another Presidential run; he will be historically notable regardless of the result, however
While Donald Trump spoke at one point, since he left office in disgrace, of starting a third party to challenge those Republicans who didn’t back him at the end of his first term in office, the climate is nowhere near where it was in either 1892 or 1912, and even Trump knows that. No, his best bet to regain office is by running as a Republican once again; in contrast to the circumstance with Roosevelt in which the Republican Party would not choose him over Taft in 1912, the modern GOP is very much still the party of Donald Trump, as can be witnessed across the country. Moreover, with the way Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is performing currently in Florida with the resurgence of the new strain of COVID-19, he might not even be the governor of his own state by the time the nominees are being chosen, and so might prove an ephemeral challenge to Trump’s hegemony over the party.
The problem is simply how? Unless Joe Biden slips up massively, in a comparable way as Donald Trump himself did, it feels really difficult to imagine, even with the voting restrictions that state Republicans have sought to enact in the months since the 2020 Presidential Election, that Biden doesn’t win another term. The withdrawal from Afghanistan, no matter the way the national and domestic media portrays it, was the correct move, and one that, I think, the American people will not ultimately hold too harshly against him; what was witnessed when the United States left Afghanistan was inevitable because of so many other factors that previous administrations helped to set into motion years ago. That Biden can even fix the new voting restrictions in some states by using whatever political weight he has to push the John Lewis Voting Rights Act through the senate filibuster should tell you the potential strength of his position, were he able to wield it effectively. He could likely get re-elected by simply extending benefits that have slashed poverty even in the midst of this dire economic and health crisis, sparked of course by COVID-19, while the aforementioned two infrastructure bills, plus a legal marijuana bill on top of all of that, would likely seal another term as President up for him as well.
But while Biden would be sealing up a second term in office, and with it, possibly some further wiggle room to liberally and progressively maneuver, he would also be sealing for Trump, a dubious first for any American President. While past Presidents have run for the executive office multiple times during their lifetimes, Trump would be the first former President to have lost two other Presidential elections as a major party nominee, and would presumably be the first candidate to lose three popular votes since William Jennings Bryan over 100 years ago.
Trump would be, to once again use his impervious logic, the biggest loser of them all. It is, therefore, for a man who is so egotistical and sensitive, a terribly massive risk for him to be taking in the first instant; one must imagine how furious and embarrassed he already is for him to be willing to dig himself an even deeper hole vis-a-vis his Presidential legacy, to redeem his 2020 loss; yet, to be sure, Donald Trump is no Grover Cleveland.
Whereas Cleveland won three popular votes in his day, was well respected and appreciated despite his dismal personal, and oftentimes Presidential, record on many things that these future generations of Americans care deeply about, the 45th President is widely and historically disliked and detested; it is difficult to imagine Donald Trump’s dying words, knowing him how we do, reflecting on how “I have tried so hard to do right,” as Cleveland stated just before dying. He is simply out of touch with the time period in which he exists in, and believes in antiquated cultural, social, and economic notions. Trump, in other words, would be lucky to have, at the end of his life, won one in three Presidential elections, and would likely, were he able to become the second President to serve in non-consecutive terms, also become the first President to serve two terms while never winning the popular vote even one time; that is, if he doesn’t become the first President to be sent to Prison after his term. While Cleveland is known, whether right or wrong, as kind, fair, thoughtful, reserved, and as someone who wished to be understood as a “fair” person and President, despite his obvious moral and ideological flaws, the 45th President has shown none of those characteristics across either his four years as the President, or throughout his nearly 80 years on this planet; their personal and professional inequities, therefore, are generally worlds apart, if in large part because Cleveland was aware that he possessed character flaws at all.
With the way the economy ended up under Trump, mixed with the way he handled the pandemic and how he continues to act completely childish and irresponsible regarding it, I don’t believe that he has the political strength as things currently sit, to throw the proverbial stones through Joe Biden’s Presidential glasshouse. If Joe Biden’s congress is able to pass the domestic legislation that will see families, who might otherwise vote for Donald Trump, find future and monetary relief thanks to the 46th President while, “Building Back Better,” then Trump might be better off waiting for 2028 if he can, yet with such a victory for Biden, he could very well slam the door shut on the Trump era in politics entirely and for good, under the aging Don Sr at least.
Donald Trump is not interested in becoming President again to make a difference, as Grover Cleveland wished to be able to do should he be given the chance; he simply wishes to bury the shame of losing to “Sleepy Joe” Biden, the “…worst Presidential candidate” in history. Should Biden make advancements in ways that the American people care about: culturally, economically, and otherwise, in concert with the track record Donald Trump had in office when handed the reins before, there will simply be no recourse for the 45th President to win his position back from Biden. And while it wouldn’t be the death of the movement that Trump helped to give a face and some life to, it would likely put a major blemish on the completely fabricated aura of invincibility that the Trump’s seek to imbue themselves with, all the while complaining about fake news and rigged elections.
Donald Trump is no Andrew Jackson, despite the similarities that one can connect when one reads about each of them. He is no Grover Cleveland either, and would do well to remember that his two best Presidential comparisons remain, not based on social tact, Warren G Harding, thanks instead to the scandalous nature of their times in office, and Herbert Hoover, thanks to their inability to grow and change with the times, circumstances and challenges. Perhaps the most damning mark on his character, aside from all of the obviously horrifying, documented tales of his racism, vulgarity, sexism, and snobbery, is that he is not even able to accept his Presidential loss as real or sincere, or that his failures as President might have led to real, extreme human suffering and death on a tremendous scale; without this humility of self and his own practical, intellectual capabilities, he has absolutely zero chance to recapture the volition of the American electorate in any meaningful way in 2024, or beyond.
