“Voters want a fraud they can believe in,” said political satirist Will Durst. They got one when Donald J. Trump was reelected to the presidency on Nov. 5.
Trump immediately began staffing his second White House administration with shocking and shabby choices for high government posts, like right-wing “Florida Man” Matt Gaetz for attorney general and anti-vaccination conspiracist Bobby “Brainworm” Kennedy Jr. to oversee this nation’s Health and Human Services Department.
On Nov. 19, Trump got good news when his sentencing for 34 felony convictions in New York City was postponed indefinitely. The convictions still stand despite the delay in sentencing, so on Jan. 20 Trump will become the first felon to take the presidential oath to “preserve, protect and defend” the United States Constitution.
Trump will also be the first U.S. president elected to two non-consecutive terms since Democrat Grover Cleveland won the presidency in 1884 and again in 1892. There the similarity ends, since Cleveland’s honesty earned him the nickname “Grover the Good.”
Cleveland first won the presidency during a hard-fought campaign against Republican James G. Blaine. During the campaign, Democrats mocked the GOP candidate as “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, continental liar from the state of Maine.” When allegations surfaced that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child, Republicans asked the jeering question, “Ma! Ma! Where’s my pa?” When Cleveland was elected, Democrats shouted their own rejoinder: “Ma! Ma! Where’s my pa? Gone to the White House! Ha-ha-ha!”
Though Cleveland may or may not have fathered the child, he took responsibility for it and said to a friend that the best way to respond to the charge was to tell the truth. Cleveland’s candor served him well during his presidency, drawing praise from Americans on both sides of the political aisle. Famed writer Mark Twain said of Cleveland, “Your patriotic virtues have won for you the homage of half the nation and the enmity of the other half. This places your character upon a summit as high as Washington’s.”
When the portly 49-year-old Cleveland married the attractive 21-year-old Frances Folsom in 1886, the nation was captivated by the spectacle of the first—and so far the only—wedding of a president in the White House. After her husband’s defeat in 1888, the young First Lady told servants in the mansion that the couple would return to the residence in four years. She was right.
In the 1892 election, Cleveland won a rematch against Republican Benjamin Harrison, who had bested Cleveland in 1888. In 1891, before his return to the presidency, Cleveland fathered a child that he and his wife named Ruth. Again the eyes of America were focused on the couple, and doting newspaper writers dubbed the infant “Baby Ruth.” The still-popular Baby Ruth candy bar was named for the child, not for the famous baseball player Babe Ruth.
Cleveland’s terms in the White House were marked by labor strife and an economic depression that presaged the Great Depression of the 1930s. Millions of Americans lived in poverty while the few at the top of the economic ladder enjoyed Gilded Age wealth and splendor. The conservative Cleveland opposed the burgeoning labor movement seeking better wages and working conditions in an America of 60 million citizens. Cleveland used federal troops to curtail striking laborers during his presidency. “Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people,” he huffed.
Cleveland also opposed the growing movement for women’s suffrage in the United States. “Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote,” he maintained. In 1886 President Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor while women were barred from voting nationally and eight labor activists awaited jail or the gallows after the infamous Haymarket Riot that happened in Chicago that same year.
When he died in 1908, Cleveland’s last words were, “I have tried so hard to do right.” Historians generally give Cleveland a mediocre rating on their lists of presidential performance and place Trump at the bottom. Today Cleveland’s words still resonate as Trump slouches toward Washington to be reborn: “The ship of democracy, which has weathered all storms, may sink through the mutiny of those on board.”
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