Tag: Elections

Grover Cleveland: The Only President to Serve Non-Consecutive Terms

By Kaleena Fraga

At a White House Christmas party this week, President Trump mused out loud that he might run for president again in 2024.

“It’s been an amazing four years,” Mr. Trump said. “We are trying to do another four years. Otherwise, I’ll see you in four years.” The crowd cheered.

If he were to run, and win, Donald Trump would become only the second president to serve two, non-consecutive terms. The first was Grover Cleveland, who was elected in 1884 and 1892, making him the 22nd and 24th president of the United States.

Let’s get into it!

The Election of 1884: Cleveland vs. Blaine

Grover Cleveland as governor of New York | Wikimedia Commons

Grover Cleveland’s second election in 1892 certainly sets him apart in American history. But his first election was also noteworthy. In 1884, Cleveland became the first Democrat to be elected since the Civil War.

Since Lincoln, the Republicans had retained the White House. But power seemed prime to shift in 1884. Cleveland—the governor of New York—was in a good position to carry his state. If he could win New York and the entire south, he could win the presidency.

What’s more, many Republicans disliked their own nominee: James G. Blaine. Anti-Blaine Republicans, called Mugwumps, were the #NeverTrumpers of their day. Blaine stood accused of using his office as Speaker of the House to obtain favors from the railroads. Mugwumps would not support their party’s nominee, warning that his election would “dishonor the nation.”

The Mugwumps made it clear that they were still Republicans—just not Blaine Republicans. “We do not ally ourselves with the Democratic party, still less sanction or approve its past” —a shot over the bow and a nod of the head toward the Civil War — “but its present candidate has proved his fidelity to the principles we avow…he commands and will receive our support.”

Democrats gleefully piled on. Soon, their campaign slogan echoed throughout the country: “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, The continental liar from the State of Maine.”

Republicans were not going to go without a fight. When it came out that Cleveland may have fathered an illegitimate child, they attacked with a slogan of their own: “Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa?”

An anti-Cleveland poster from the 1884 election | Wikimedia Commons

Cleveland admitted that he could be the child’s father. His supporters argued that, “Mr. Blaine has been delinquent in office but blameless in public life, while Mr. Cleveland has been a model of official integrity but culpable in personal relations.”

The solution? Elect Cleveland and his integrity to the presidency—let Blaine return to his innocent public life.

A supporter of Blaine’s made things worse at a rally in New York City. Attempting to rouse the crowd, he accused the Democrats of being the party of “rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” The city’s Irish Catholics, whom Blaine hoped to court, soured on the Republican candidate. (Blaine was not present—but did not denounce the remark, either.)

Antipathy toward Blaine and Cleveland’s New York roots helped propel the latter to the presidency. It was a narrow victory. Cleveland won New York—and, therefore, the presidency— by only 1,000 votes.

After the election, Democrats commandeered the Republican’s campaign slogan. “Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa?” was now answered by: “Off to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha!”

The Election of 1888: Cleveland vs. Harrison

Benjamin Harrison, circa 1896 | Library of Congress

In 1888, Cleveland faced Benjamin Harrison. Harrison was, in many ways, a more formidable foe than Blaine. He was a former Civil War general, a senator from Indiana, and the grandson of a president—William Henry Harrison, who is best known for dying one month into his presidency. Benjamin Harrison, however, had not been the party’s first choice. He won the nomination on the eighth ballot at the Republican convention.

Cleveland had also caused problems for himself. In December of 1887, he called on Congress to reduce high protective tariffs, believing them to be unfair to consumers. Cleveland was told that this would give the Republicans ammunition as they moved into 1888—tariffs were the issue of the day—but he didn’t care. “What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?” Cleveland asked.

Indeed, the election of 1888 focused on what the two men stood for—instead of their moral failings. Republicans attacked Cleveland for his position on tariffs and for his aggressive use of the presidential veto, including the veto of a bill which denied pension increases to Civil War veterans.

By this time, the era of Lincoln Republicans had ended. Republicans of the 1880s were the party of big business. They found Cleveland and his ideas about tariff reductions incredibly threatening. So, they barnstormed the country. Republicans told voters that the Democrats did not understand money and that Cleveland’s reelection would cause people to lose their jobs. They also heavily emphasized their candidate’s political lineage, with campaign slogans like “The Same Old Hat – It Fits Ben Just Right.” (Democrats responded with their own slogan: “His Grandfather’s Hat – It’s Too big for BEN.”)

In the end, Harrison won the election. Cleveland lost his crucial state of New York as well as Harrison’s Indiana, which resulted in a lopsided Harrison victory—Harrison won the Electoral College but Cleveland won the popular vote. (47.9 percent to 48.6 percent.) That puts Cleveland in league with only four other candidates who have won more votes but lost the presidency: Andrew Jackson (1824), Samuel Tilden (1876), Al Gore (2000), and Hillary Clinton (2016).

(For our purposes of comparing Cleveland to Trump, this is significant. Cleveland won the popular vote. Given Trump’s loss of both the Electoral College and the popular vote in 2020, it’s possible he’d face an uphill battle in 2024. Trump may, however, be interested to hear that the 1888 election was likely rife with corruption. Black votes were suppressed. Other votes were bought. In one anecdote, Harrison thanked Providence for his victory. His campaign manager, Mark Hanna, noted to a friend: “Providence hadn’t a damn thing to do with it. A number of men were compelled to approach the penitentiary to make him president.”)

As Cleveland left the White House, his wife Frances, turned to face the staff. “I want to find everything just as it is now when we come back again,” she said. “We are coming back just four years from today.” 

Cleveland was down, but not out. Four years later, he’d run against Harrison for a second time.

The Election of 1892: Harrison vs. Cleveland

Grover Cleveland, circa 1892 | Library of Congress

According to historian Heather Cox Richardson, the Republicans moved aggressively after the election to ensure their hold on power. They had, after all, controlled the White House for decades. So, how to avoid another showing by a Democrat like Cleveland?

Add new states! That was the plan—add six new states, creating a Republican firewall. In 1889, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington joined the Union. In 1890, Idaho and Wyoming were established.

Republican operatives were sure this plan would work. But, as is wont in American politics, it backfired. In the 1890 midterm elections, the Democrats took the House of Representatives by a margin of 2:1. They swept to power bolstered by a bad economy and by the American West.

With the election of 1892 looming, Republicans threw their weight behind Harrison. But they weren’t happy with him. He could be cold and standoffish and refused to listen to advice. It’s possible that Harrison only ran for a second term out of spite—at the party convention, many Republicans tried to get James G. Blaine on the ticket instead of Harrison. Blaine refused.

After a quiet campaign, Cleveland swept to victory. For the first time since the Civil War, the Democrats won the presidency, the Senate, and the House.

We recently wrote about painful presidential transitions, and the Benjamin Harrison to Grover Cleveland transition deserves a place on that list. According to Richardson, it was the among the worst.

After his loss, Harrison threw up his hands. In Republican controlled newspapers, the embittered party told voters that Democrats didn’t know how to run the country—so everyone should take their money out of the stock market.

And thus began the Panic of 1893. Those who saw it coming begged Washington for help. But Harrison’s administration wouldn’t lift a finger. According to Harrison’s Treasury Secretary, they were only responsible for the economy until Cleveland’s inauguration.

In fact, the economy collapsed 10 days before Cleveland entered office. Cleveland was left to manage an economic crisis—which may have led him to regret returning to the presidency in the first place. According to the Miller Center, Cleveland left office a bitter man. When he died in 1908, his last words were “I have tried so hard to do right.”

—

What will happen in 2024? We don’t know—but it’s definitely too early for speculation. Or is it…?

Predictability of the Unpredictable: Dark Horse Candidates & 2020

By Kaleena Fraga

(To check out this piece in podcast form, click here)

There’s been much discussion about what form the election of 2020 will take, especially for Democrats. Will it be like 1976? Will infighting make the election look more like 1968? Or could a crowded field on both sides make the election more like 1824?

There’s really no saying what will happen. So far the race is remarkably diverse, with multiple women candidates and people of color. With the announcement of Pete Buttegieg’s candidacy this morning, 2020 will also have an openly gay candidate.

If there’s one thing predictable about campaigns, it is that they are unpredictable. Big names at the beginning sometimes don’t get far. Political giants cancel each other out, or burn out early on. A brief moment, a single misstep, can crater a candidacy (see Howard Dean or Ed Muskie).

With a diverse field on the left (and the possibility that the president will face a challenger from within his own party) there’s no telling who may come out on top. And indeed, dark horse candidates are a fixture of American political history.

James Garfield was one of the first dark horse nominees in American history, although he came to that position more as a consensus candidate than a total surprise. Garfield attended the convention in 1880 not as a candidate, but to nominate John Sherman of Ohio. When the convention deadlocked, Garfield’s name was surprisingly added to the mix, and on the 36th ballot he came out on top as the nominee. The day before his inauguration he noted: “This honor comes to me unsought. I have never had the presidential fever; not even for a day.”

Certainly as the power of party bosses dimmed, and as the primary process became more democratic, the possibility of a dark horse candidate grew. The nation saw a stark example of this in 1968, when Eugene McCarthy became the front runner by running against the president of his own party.

The election of 1968 was a race filled with political giants. Lyndon Johnson was set to run for reelection. There were rumors of a challenge from the left by Bobby Kennedy. On the right, Richard Nixon had begun his carefully executed comeback tour, and he faced opposition from George Wallace, the firebrand governor of Alabama who infamously declared: “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

Eugene McCarthy was a senator from Minnesota. He had voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution but had become increasingly critical of the Vietnam war. As Kennedy wavered over challenging a sitting president, McCarthy announced his intention to hit Johnson from the left. When McCarthy won 42% of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, he exposed deep rifts among the electorate surrounding Vietnam.

LBJ says he “will not seek, nor accept” the nomination

From here, the race descended into one of the most dramatic in American history–Johnson dropped out, Kennedy jumped in, and the year saw violent riots, assassinations, and the election of Nixon. When Hubert Humphrey, then LBJ’s vice president, joined the race late and finally won the nomination, it struck many as decidedly undemocratic.

Other dark horse candidates dot American history. No one took John Kennedy seriously when he announced his intention to run–Harry Truman pressed Kennedy to “be patient” and Lyndon Johnson called his future running mate “little scrawny fellow with rickets”. Bill Clinton rose to the top of an uncrowded field because most serious Democrats accepted the logic of the day that George H.W. Bush was unbeatable–SNL even parodied the skittishness of Democrats who hesitated to challenge the president.

Of course, the most recent example of a dark horse candidate ascending to the presidency is that of 2016, and the election of Donald J. Trump.

With a crowded field, and the possibility of a challenge to a sitting president, there’s no telling what may happen next. History may offer some examples, but 2020 is shaping up to be a beast of its own.

Shifting Tides: The Midterms of 1966

By Kaleena Fraga

In terms of crazy presidential campaigns, 2016 has nothing on 1968. The election of 1968 saw horrifying violence, the shattering of the Democratic party along lines of civil rights and Vietnam, and the end of liberalism in the Republican party. The election of 1968 brought an incumbent president to his knees, and Richard Nixon to the White House. It changed everything, including how we think about presidential campaigns and state primaries.

Today, many Americans will cast a ballot. Midterm elections usually aren’t as attention-grabbing as presidential ones, yet this year Americans have been told that this is the most important election of their life. Certainly, given recent violence, the stakes feel high.

No, 2016 has nothing on 1968. But 2020 could be another wild-ride. As the country turns out to the polls, we look back at the midterm election of 1966, and the seeds planted that year that burst through the soil in 1968.

Two years earlier, Lyndon Johnson had won a landslide victory, winning the election in his own right after serving the rest of John F. Kennedy’s term. Meanwhile, the Republicans had suffered a terrible defeat under the banner of Barry Goldwater, who infamously declared at the Republican convention that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Johnson won a stunning 486 electoral votes to Goldwater’s 52. He took every state except for Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina.

The Republican party, pundits declared, was done.

Controlling both houses of Congress and the White House, Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats seemed unstoppable. They passed Johnson’s Great Society programs, including Medicare, and legislation that strengthened civil rights and voting rights. But as Johnson’s Great Society expanded, so did the conflict in Vietnam.

In 1966, tides had shifted. The public paid more attention to Vietnam, where they could see scant evidence of American victories. The economy began to slow. Race riots erupted across the nation. Johnson saw his popularity drop to below 45%. Republicans saw their opportunity. And they fought. Hard.

Determined to help restore the party to power (and to set himself up as a presidential candidate in 1968) Richard Nixon leapt into the fray. Nixon had not won an election since 1956, as Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president. After his failed bid for governor of California, he had bitterly told the press that they “would not have Nixon to kick around anymore.” And yet the former vice president had quietly been making moves behind the scenes. In the final months before the 1966 election, Nixon campaigned for 86 Republican candidates down the ballot. In the end, 59 of them won their elections.

“Tricky Dick”, thought to be politically dead, gained a lot of friends in 1966. Friends who would answer the phone when he called about running for president in 1968.

Although it was not enough to wrest control of the government from Johnson and the Democrats, Republicans won 47 seats in the House, 3 in the Senate, and 8 governorships. His majorities reduced, Newsweek wrote, “in the space of a single autumn day… the 1,000 day reign of Lyndon I came to an end: The Emperor of American politics became just a President again.”

In 1966, Ronald Reagan became governor of California. George H.W. Bush won a House seat in Texas. Gerald Ford won his reelection campaign and became House Minority Leader, increasing his prominence on the national stage. Republicans, wounded after 1964, suddenly believed they could win again. And they did–seven out of the next ten presidential elections were won by the GOP.

From 1966, Johnson became increasingly unpopular and unable to push legislation like he had in the first two years of his term. In 1968, he stunned the nation by announcing he would not “seek, nor accept” the nomination of the presidency.

The election of 1968 was the most dramatic of the 20th century, but it all started in 1966. Today, Americans vote. Who knows what seeds the nation will plant today, that may bloom in 2020 or beyond?

 

James Madison: Last Words and Lessons Learned

By Kaleena Fraga

When James Madison died on this day in 1836, he was the last surviving signer of the U.S. Constitution. Because his fellow ex-presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe had serendipitously died on July 4th, Madison’s doctor offered to prolong his life so that he too could die on the July 4th anniversary. Madison refused. He died six days before the 60th anniversary of the nation’s birth.

As Madison’s family gathered around his deathbed, one of his nieces noticed a shift in her uncle’s expression. When she asked him if he was alright, he responded with his last words: “Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear.”

Madison, often called the Father of the Constitution, accomplished a lot in the early history of the United States, including his two terms as president. (One of History First’s favorite political facts is that the U.S. has only had three consecutive two term presidents twice–Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Clinton, Bush, Obama). But on this anniversary of his death, we’ll focus on a lesson Madison learned early on. Madison, who once read the histories of every confederacy ever in order to systematically analyze what could work and what wouldn’t in the young United States, only had to learn his lessons once.

In 1777 Madison ran for the Virginia Assembly. These elections–nine months after independence was declared–would be the first elections which Virginia’s white male citizens could participate. County-based elections at the time had a festive atmosphere, and were treated like a public holiday. Those running for election customarily provided alcohol–beer and whiskey–to their voters.

According to Madison biographer Noah Feldman, from his work the The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President, there was a symbolic meaning to to this arrangement. “In a culture that emphasized deference to authority,” Feldman writes, “the candidates were presenting themselves as generous, gracious men of means, pleased to indulge the (slightly) lower orders.”

Madison at the time was flush with republican spirit, and the belief that all men were created equal. To provide alcohol to voters, he reasoned, would be akin to buying their votes. He believed that this election should reflect “the purity of moral and of republican principles.” Voters, he thought, could do their civic duty without the “the corrupting influence of spiritous liquors, and other treats.”

Big mistake.

Although Madison decided his voters would be flattered that he treated them as equals, and as men incorruptible by liquor, he had erred. Voters saw Madison’s decision to withhold alcohol as an expression of “pride or parsimony.” His opponent, Charles Porter, was a tavern keeper who happily provided alcohol to the gathered voters. Porter won the election.

“The ordinary voter,” writes Feldman, “did not want to have a pint of ale with James Madison; and the feeling, Madison demonstrated, was mutual.”

Madison learned his lesson. He’d never again fail to provide alcohol and “treats” to his voters. In any case, his legacy grew to overshadow a single lost election early in his political career.