Grover Cleveland: A President I Can Admire?
James Hanley on Aug 20th 2008
I teach U.S. Presidency every other year. It’s not one of my favorite classes, as I’m not a real expert on the presidency, and don’t often read about it except when preparing for to teach it again.
But as I prepare for the class, I once again find myself looking for a president I can admire. I’m not into hero worship, which I consider a dangerous obsession, I just worry that my standards must be set unrealistically high if I can’t find even one president I can say I really like. But they all seem to have such a disreputable side. I usually look among the lesser known presidents: the standard lists of greats voted upon by historians—and a list made by political scientists wouldn’t differ—are heavily biased towards war presidents, which is a perverse betrayal of those academics’ general liberalism.
So I’m always pleased to find something—anything—I can like about a president I’ve previously not spent much time considering, and in Presidential Power: Unchecked and Unbalanced, by Matthew Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg (the best book I’ve ever read on the presidency), I found this little gem about Grover Cleveland.
In 1887 he devoted virtually his entire State of the Union message to [the tariff]. Protective tariffs, he explained, not only made for higher prices but generated more revenue than was needed to run the government. The accumulating surplus was an invitation to “schemes of public plunder.”
Imagine that, a president who understood the harm of tariffs and campaigned against them even though it cost him the election. (The Republicans followed Henry Clay’s “American System,” and favored tariffs, which won them the votes of Northern industrialists.) It’s too bad it took another century for the ideas of free trade to really begin to take hold.
Another interesting bit of trivia about Cleveland: His real name was Stephen Grover Cleveland, and he was known in the saloons of Buffalo, New York, as “Big Steve.” So how does someone as famous as a president entirely lose his first name?
And, of course, he was our only non-consecutive two-term president. The argument in this book suggests that could only happen because post-bellum presidential politics was party-centered, and it was the party people were voting for more than the candidate. In today’s candidate-centered politics, defeat is more of a reflection of the individual, and consequently harder to recover from. But I’ll give 10 bonus points to the first commenter who names the last person to be elected president after previously losing the race.
Filed in The Basement, The Bookshelf, The Bureau
Nixon?
When you say, “lose the race,” you mean, after they were the party’s Presidential nominee? Then Dog’s New Clothes would be right; the answer would be Nixon. But Johnson, Reagan, and Bush (41) all ran previous to their winning race, and failed to obtain their party’s nomination.
But I’ll give 10 bonus points to the first commenter who names the last person to be elected president after previously losing the race.
According to quite a few liberal friends of mine, the answer would be George W. Bush, losing in 2000. I assume you are thinking of someone else, however.
D.A. Once again, LOL.
An interesting point about war presidents getting all the love. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that there’s a lot to study about their actions and that study leads to sympathy by historians.
Does this mean that Bush will go down in history as one of the great presidents? After all his economic idiocies and human rights violations aren’t as bad as FDR’s were.
Fun Grover Cleveland fact: His non-consecutive terms mean that he is the only president to get 2 lines in Jonathan Coulton’s “Presidents” song.
Dog’s New Clothes wins the 10 bonus points (which, as on Who’s Line is it Anyway, mean absolutely nothing).
And another 10 points to whomever can name one other thing about Cleveland that makes him quite unusual among presidents?
And 5 bonus points to D.A. for the best wrong answer, unfortunately, as a PL member he’s ineligible to receive prizes.
Jim, yes indeed that’s what I meant. Your pause for clarification of the question was costly. Fortunately, you too are ineligible for prizes.
And another 10 points to whomever can name one other thing about Cleveland that makes him quite unusual among presidents?
That one’s easy: only president to be named after a city in Ohio and a character from Sesame Street. (Oh, and he’s the only president crass enough to get married in the White House.)
If I’m remembering right, Cleveland was the only President to also serve as a Supreme Court Justice.
Tom, you’re thinking of Taft.
D.A. wins the 10 bonus points for correctly guessing that Cleveland got married in the White House (try to imagine a bachelor president today!). As a PL member he’s ineligible for any prizes I may in the future decide to hand out, so the points go into oblivion.
Jason, of course, is correct that Taft is the only person to be both a President and serve on the Supreme Court (post-presidency). Not only that, he was Chief Justice.