Presidential Character: Week Twenty-Four, And We're Back

It's Grover Cleveland 2: THE QUICKENING!

...what, were you expecting "Electric Boogaloo"?

As mentioned the first time around, Cleveland is the rare President who had two separate terms.  Technically it's the same guy, but historians have it that he's 22nd AND 24th, so the two terms have to be viewed separate as well.

There's not much to say about a President I've already labeled as an Active-Negative.  The thing about A-N types is that they tend to be stubborn, Uncompromising, respectably consistent.  Cleveland the Second Term would be expected to act pretty much the same way that the First Term did.  The problem for Cleveland was that while A-Ns do not change, the moods and trends of their times do.  And a lot was different four years after Cleveland had left the White House.

The administration stuck between Clevelands - Harrison's - was a period of economic mismanagement.  The GOP-led government had pursued a high-tariff, high-spending budget plan with little awareness of how the private sector would be altered.  The high tariffs encouraged businesses to raise prices, which hurt a lot of the poor and especially a lot of farmers in the South and West.  The Republicans tried a bi-metal money policy (Silver-to-Gold) that hurt the nation's gold reserves (this was one of the reasons why getting away from the Gold Standard was a key milestone of 20th century economics).

The reaction from the farmers and low-income Americans was to form one of the more successful third-party groups in the nation's history - The People's Party AKA the Populists - which divided the Republicans during the 1892 election well enough for Cleveland to win a clear electoral victory.  However, that victory turned rotten when the Panic of 1893 rolled around, caused by over-speculation in the railroad industry and by a run on banks tied into the Silver-to-Gold (16 to 1 rate, which cheapened the value of gold and made it too easy to cash in) policy of the day.  Despite Cleveland's efforts, the nation slid into a prolonged economic depression that lasted about 4-5 years.

Cleveland also had to cope with labor unrest, the most organized the nation had yet seen.  Worker unions had spread as the nation's industry had boomed, and the economic malaise hit a lot of workers hard, leading to strikes and the occasional riot.  When the Pullman Strike happened, it severely crimped our nation's railroads to where even the government was affected, which drove Cleveland to calling out the troops to suppress the strike.

The Panic dominated his entire tenure, and as an A-N President most of his options were limited to "stay calm" and "stick to the gold standard," which in the long-term are practical stances but in the short-term were very painful.  Coping with a party that didn't like him much, Cleveland could only stand by and watch his silverite opponents take control of the Democratic Party, merge it with the Populists, and fail in the 1896 elections.

In terms of legacy, Cleveland's first term was of more importance and effectiveness than his second.  While his administrations are not remembered fondly, his personal tenure - viewing Public Office as a Public Trust - remains a better monument.  If only he had been a more Active-Positive, he could have found solutions to the economic woes that ended his second term.

Next Week: Into the 20th Century With Our Greatest President E... Wait, He's Only Vice-President For This Entry...  Patience, My Progressive Allies, Patience...

President Character: Week Twenty-Two, Gone To The White House

When we write of Grover Cleveland, we write of a man best-known to Americans as "The Guy Who Served Two Separate Terms".  A guy good for a punchline in the Simpsons/Futurama 'Verse.  There are other things he should be known for.

He should be known as one of the few Presidential candidates to win the popular vote three straight times (FDR is the other, and he's got the excuse of being a Four-Termer).  He didn't win the Presidency the second time because of the Electoral College.  Cleveland was also the first Democrat elected to the Presidency since 1860 (Johnson was not elected to it, Tilden should have won it but the corruption of the electoral system in 1876 blocked him), breaking the Republican monopoly on the office of 24 years.

He's also a candidate that had one of the biggest bombshells of a Presidential campaign ever: the revelation days after his nomination that he had fathered a child out of wedlock (he was enjoying the bachelor lifestyle up to that point).  It didn't help that he publicly acknowledged the child as his (although he and his supporters took pains to note he provided financial support).  Republicans gleefully took to the streets chanting "Ma! Ma! Where's My Pa!"  This was a huge load on Cleveland's election hopes, because outside of his personal lifestyle, Cleveland was arguably the most incorruptible political figure this nation ever saw: this was a guy with a reputation for vetoing bad bills, for gutting out corruption in local and state office, for going against Tammany Hall (the political machine of the 19th Century) and winning.  Cleveland was quoted as saying "Public Office is a Public Trust" and he damn well meant what he said.

His opponent was one of the Grant-era ethically-challenged congressmen, Blaine, who was reportedly pious in his personal life but up to his hips in corruption in his public job.  As a result, the debate became a question between voting for a man with questionable personal habits but clean policy record or for a man with questionable policy records and clean personal habits.

And it was a close race, the mudslinging involved one of the nastiest since Andrew Jackson's era and unrivaled until, well, Clinton and/or Obama's.  It took a last-minute PR faux pas of a Protestant preacher denouncing Irish voters in New York to switch the vote there to Cleveland's favor, in which he squeaked out  a win by 1,000 votes.

Democrats responded to the Republican rally cry by answering "Gone to the White House Ha! Ha! Ha!"

And what did Cleveland do once he reached the White House?

He vetoed more Congressional bills than any other President in history.  Granted, a lot of those bills were individually written to pension out war veterans rather than there being one over-arching congressional bill that would have covered them all.  But Cleveland wasn't the sort to let a single bill pass his inspection, and he didn't agree that Congress should override the veterans' Pension Office that had denied those pension petitions already.  But this was a sign of how Cleveland worked: he believed in limited government in the small-c conservative way, and every political stance - reducing the tariffs (taxes) because there was an ongoing surplus, supporting the gold standard over silver (which meant cheap money) - reflected that.

All in all, Cleveland demonstrated a lot of the traits - highly driven but unimaginative, reactive rather than active, Uncompromising above all - that are found in Active-Negative Presidents.  Granted: he never demonstrated obsessive self-interest and self-loathing most Negatives have, and had the love and faith in public office that an Active-Positive has, probably putting him more on the borderline between the two traits than most other Presidents.  But he was more A-N than A-P.

I'd say more, but there's still another blog entry I gotta write on the guy.  Non-consecutive blog entries, after all we got a schedule to maintain and Cleveland won't begrudge us that...

Next Week: Benjamin's just this guy, ya know?