What The Country Needs Right Now Is The Next Grover Cleveland
And why we won’t get it
If you ask anyone to name a fact about President Grover Cleveland, you will likely be met with glassy eyes or a face of confusion. President Cleveland’s biggest claim to fame is the fact that he is the only president in US history to serve nonconsecutive terms (a feat that former president Trump is attempting to replicate in 2024.) Grover Cleveland served at the tail end of the 19th century, a part of history that is already relegated to the dustbin of the collective American mind. For a president, Grover Cleveland was a largely unremarkable man. Biographer Allan Nevins wrote, “[I]n Grover Cleveland, the greatness lies in typical rather than unusual qualities. He had no endowments that thousands of men do not have.”
That might not sound like a ringing endorsement, but that is exactly the kind of president that the United States needs right now. The country does not need a Franklin Roosevelt or a JFK or a Ronald Reagan. They need a regular man with strong convictions.
President Cleveland was principled. Many of his critics would say to a fault. When sugar plantation owners overthrew the Hawaiian queen in hopes of courting annexation by the United States, Cleveland shelved the bill and instead opened an investigation into the events leading up to the…
