TO donald trump would like to be Grover Cleveland. Or at least he wants to do what he achieved more than a century ago: return to the White House after leaving after losing an election.
Cleveland (Caldwell, New Jersey 1837-Princeton, NJ, 1908) is the only one in the history of the United States to have achieved that milestone. Others tried, but all of them failed.
Trump, who faces off this Tuesday with Kamala Harris in new elections in the United Statesseeks to be the second to return triumphantly to the White House after losing the trust of the electorate.
Currently, the Twenty-second Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees that a president can serve two full terms, but they do not have to be consecutive. Nothing prevents, on that side, Trump from returning if he wins the elections. elections in November of this year.
A bachelor with an illegitimate child
Who was Grover Cleveland? Born in New Jersey, he was mayor of Buffalo, New York, and governor of New York State before running for president for the first time. He had earned a reputation as a person of integrity, as the scourge of the influential Tammany Hall, a group that had taken control of New York politics thanks to clientelistic relationships. When he was proclaimed candidate of the Democratic Party to the presidency, it was said of him: “We love him above all because of the enemies he has made.”
However, during the electoral campaign his opponents attacked him because of an illegitimate son he had. «Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha! » (“Mom, mom, where is my dad? He went to the White House, ha ha ha!”), they mocked. But that did not dent his candidacy and he reached the White House after defeating Republican James G. Blaine in the 1884 elections. He thus broke with 24 years of Republican presidents, since the time of Abraham Lincoln.
When he took office, Cleveland was a bachelor of almost 48 years old with an imposing appearance: 1.80 tall and weighing 120 kilos. In 1886 he was the first president to get married in the White House. His wife, named Frances, was 28 years younger and the daughter of a deceased friend who had been her guardian. They had five children.
Grover Cleveland’s White House wedding to young Frances in 1886
During his first term, Grover Cleveland pursued a reformist and austere policy, in favor of low taxes and opposed to a paternalistic government. The specialist Javier Redondo calls him a “hyperactive obstructionist” in ‘Presidents of the United States’ (La Esfera de los Libros). He was also against high tariffs for raising prices and harming consumers, while Republicans defended them to protect local producers.
The heated debate over tariffs marked the following election campaign, in which he faced the Republican Benjamin Harrison. It is possible that a letter from the British ambassador in which he was in favor of the Democratic candidate weighed against Cleveland, something that could reduce his support among the Irish community.
Cleveland won in 1888 in number of votes, but in the count of the electoral votes of each state, which the US electoral system takes into account to decide the winner, he lost 233 to 168 against Harrison, who he became president. At first, Cleveland retired from the political front line and dedicated himself to working as a lawyer in New York.
Donald Trump lost the elections to Joe Biden in 2020 and secluded himself in his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, although he has remained present during this time in the political life of the United States, both for his participation in public events and for the different matters that are open in the courts. In 2022 announced that he would run for president again.
The revenge against Harrison
In the case of Grover Cleveland, he decided to run again in the elections against Harrison in 1892. During the Republican president’s term, laws were passed to raise tariffs and coin silver, while Cleveland was a supporter of the gold standard. This time he took revenge and won by 277 electoral votes to 145, a wide margin contributed by the emergence of a new formation, the Populist Party, which took votes away from the Republican candidate.
Inauguration of Grover Cleveland’s second term on the steps of the Capitol in 1893
Cleveland now had to face a serious economic crisis, without the repeal of the Silver Law being able to put a stop to it. Panic broke out in the stock market, hundreds of banks and thousands of companies went bankrupt and massive strikes were called. In one of these strikes, in 1894 at the Pullman company in Chicago, Cleveland sent the army and thirty strikers died.
With this turbulent legacy, his successor as Democratic candidate in 1896, William Jennings Bryanlost the election to the Republican William McKinley. Until 16 years later, with Woodrow Wilsonthere was no other Democratic president in the United States.
Failed returns
Aside from Cleveland, four presidents tried to return to the White House after losing an election, but without success. Martin van BurenAfter losing in 1840, he failed to be nominated by the Democrats in 1844 and ran for another party in 1848. Millard Fillmorewho succeeded Zachary Taylor when he died in 1850, was not nominated by the Whig Party for 1852 and ran with another party. Theodore Roosevelt He was not nominated in 1912 by the Republicans and went to the elections with the progressives. Finally, Herbert Hoover He lost in 1932 and tried to be a Republican candidate in 1936 and 1940, without success.
Grover Cleveland, who marked American political life in the last decades of the 19th century, is so far the only one who has two positions on the list of presidents of the country, the 22nd and the 24th. Will Trump be the second to do so?
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