/his/ — Daily Presidents Thread #22: Grover Cleveland

oh look, the guy who shot striking workers and refused to pay for seeds for some farmers. thank god we moved past this batshit insane Gilded Age looneytoonarian style of government.

>>18522729
Fuck off LBJfag.

>Cleveland was the first Democrat elected to the White House in 28 years. Huge question marks hovered around his portly frame. Could the party of disunion be trusted to govern the union? Cleveland appointed two Confederate veterans to his Cabinet but stopped short of handing the government over to Rebels. Despite the pressure for civil service reform, the president was nonetheless deluged by office-starved Democrats and ended up giving into their demands and firing 70% of Federal employees. A conservative Northeasterner, Cleveland strongly believed in the laisse-faire credo of the day and won the support of big business.

>Pension problems gave him some of his worst headaches. The government had tried to provide for Union army veterans, but by the 1880s the pension system was suffering from increasing fraud with many checks going to men who had never actually served or were bounty jumpers or deserters, and Republican administrations had not attempted to do anything and risk the wrath of the Grand Army of the Republic, the nation's largest fraternal order of veterans. As a Democrat and non-veteran, Cleveland was in a risky situation but he displayed real courage in taking them on, vetoing scores of pension bills--one time he sarcastically referred to a man "disabled" by a mild case of the measles.

He did a good job, arguably the last sane Democrat president ever.

>>18522721 (OP)
>excessive use of veto
It really wasn't excessive. The pork barrel spending that happened prior to Cleveland's vetoes was part of the general trend of Gilded Age corruption.
>the Panic of 1893
This was caused by Harrison and Cleveland saved the economy.
>the Annexation of Hawaii (which he tried to block)
That didn't happen until McKinley's administration. Harrison pulled a coup during his lameduck period, but Cleveland, a staunch anti-imperialist, undid it.
>What do you think of the groomer rapist?
He wasn't a rapist, and you're leaving out that he massively expanded on Arthur's civil service reforms and naval expansion. All things considered, he was one of our best presidents.

>Tariffs also gave Cleveland a vexing headache. Republicans in Congress had set high duty rates during the Civil War and had no motivation to lower them, and by the 1880s it was increasingly hard to sell the electorate on the old, shopworn claim that higher tariffs and higher wages were one and the same. As the 19th century Federal government was tiny and took in more tax revenue, chiefly from duties, than it could possibly spend, an alarming budget surplus was piling up. Thus surplus might be gotten rid of through pork barrel handouts such as veterans' pensions, or duties might be lowered. Cleveland was largely ignorant of tariffs prior to being president but in office, he became increasingly impressed with arguments for lowering them such as reduced consumer prices and less protection for business monopolies.

>Low tariffs had been a traditional Democrat plank, but when Cleveland proposed the idea, party leaders were aghast and thought it was political suicide, especially with a presidential election coming up. He countered by arguing "What's the use of running if you don't stand for something?" The president proposed his tariff reduction scheme in his annual State of the Union message at the end of 1887. Democrats were disillusioned and Republican leaders crowed at their hopes for next year. "Gentlemen, there's one more president for us yet in the tariff issue," said James Blaine.

>>18522721 (OP)
The Maria Halpin story comes to us via a game of telephone, with each newspaper trying to be more sensationalist than the next. Rape was not the main subject of the scandal in 1884, it was the fact that he had father an illegitimate child. The rape allegations were probably one of those press inventions, and didn't gain much traction until very recently (post #MeToo). We don't know for certain if Cleveland was the one to father the child - it may have been his business partner, Oscar Folsom. I hope DNA testing will provide us with an answer on that one. The allegations that he had her committed to a mental hospital are not true - she checked herself into a clinic for alcoholics.

>As Erie sheriff, Cleveland personally hanged two convicted murderers, Patrick Morrissey on September 6, 1872, and Jack Gaffney on February 14, 1873.

>>18523630
>both Irish
They don't think it be like it is but it do.

mf-er's biggest claim to fame he doesn't even have anymore

>>18522729
The Dawes Act was fairly inexcusable.

i would rate him a 2.5/10

>mediocre first term, disastrous second
>also a literal pedo who groomed his wife (she actually called him "Uncle Cleve" as a child)
>he skyrocketed through politics, one year Mayor of Buffalo, the next Governor of New York, the next President, he was big on reform before taking office so that’s cool, after office, he opposed women's suffrage so bad
>his poor handling of the 1893 panic exiled the Democrats from power for the next 17 years but also the rise of populism in the name of Bryan, all these things against him risen of course, so he was so bad, these mostly good things happened.

>>18522721 (OP)
his first term was ok, the second was as catastrophic as Herbert Hoover's presidency. he may have fathered an illegitimate child but there was no DNA testing or any real way to prove it back then. like most Gilded Age presidents he also left little long-term impact as most issues of the day aren't relevant anymore.

>established presidential line of succession
>Interstate Commerce Commission
>Bureau/Department of Labor
>Civil Service Commission
>Department of Agriculture
>refused to condone the coup/heist of Hawaii
>vetoed an unjust immigration literacy test

>>18524143
granted but this was mostly all in his first term, not his horrible second

>>18524143
Lincoln started the DoA and TR the DoL.

GC was a typical 19th century man with a strong sense of duty and propriety. The Halpin affair doesn't necessarily reflect well on his character and his relationship with Frances was a bit weird but I think both genuinely loved each other.

>>18524153
"Weird" is putting it kindly. He was a friend of her father’s, was present at her birth as an adult man and was basically treated as her uncle growing up (even calling him “Uncle Cleve”). They also married when she was barely an adult.

It’s hard to look at the totality of that situation and see anything except a clear case of pedophile grooming.

>>18524155
Frances was 21 when they married, how can that possibly be pedophilia?

>>18524157
it is when you bought her a baby carriage

>>18524135
to a much worse extent than Hoover, Cleveland was a believer in the idea that government should do nothing about a depression and he also had the Army fire on striking workers. the economy for McKinley's first eight months in office was still pretty garbage and things don't turn around until 1898. Cleveland also voiced his opposition to women voting in a post-presidency magazine column.

>>18524162
the idea of government intervention in a depression wasn't a thing yet in the 1890s and the Federal government at that time was not set up in such a way that it would even be possible. the New Deal was specifically made possible because of WWI and the creation of the USSR making the idea of top-down government economic controls more viable.

what kept the depression going as long as it did was low investor confidence as it was assumed Cleveland would lose the battle over silver. only after McKinley backed the gold standard did everyone feel confident that recovery was here.

Cleveland intervened in the Pullman strike because it impaired delivery of the mail, which was a Federal function.

>the Maria Halpin story was yellow journalism concocted by the Blaine campaign to smear Cleveland and he wasn't accused of rape, but fathering an illegitimate child that could well have not been his anyway, no real way to prove it pre-DNA testing
>Cleveland was known for his vetoes, he was the last Jacksonian Democrat who believed in a strictly defined role for the Federal government and he wasn't the type to push bold initiatives
>he fought pension fraud, created the ICC as a bone to those who complained about railroad abuses, and supported civil service reform, he had some success with tariff reform
>the 1890s depression was bad, but he did manage to hold onto the gold standard
>his handling of the Venezuelan crisis was a stepping stone to a more active US role in Latin American affairs
>the Democrat Party moved away from Cleveland's Jacksonian views afterward to become the wealth redistributionist party, but until the 1950s he was held in strong regard by historians although Wilson and FDR's legacies gradually eclipsed his

>>18524125
The Dawes Act led to bad outcomes, but most of that happened after Cleveland. He was more progressive on Native rights than the Republicans of the era. One of his first actions was undoing Chester Arthur's opening up of the Dakota territory to white settlers.
>>18524130
Your only real political criticism is that he handled the depression poorly, when he's literally the one responsible for getting the treasury bailed out so the country could recover

>>18522721 (OP)
He also personally executed condemn convicts as constable in Buffalo.

>>18522721 (OP)
https://youtu.be/a87Msv0ZnRo

>A heavy cigar smoker, Cleveland developed a tumor in his mouth. The president underwent surgery in August 1893 on a riverboat on the Potomac where a piece of his jaw was removed and replaced by a rubber prosthetic. The procedure was kept strictly secret to avoid drawing public concern about Cleveland's health, especially during the unfolding economic panic. Had he died under the surgeon's knife, he would have been succeeded to office by his soft money vice president Adlai Stevenson, which would have no doubt prolonged the crisis.

>>18522721 (OP)
In his first term he vetoed more bills than any other president combined. A lot of it were Civil War pension requests which were widely fraudulent and used as a patronage tool by the Republican Party to buy votes.

>>18524726
Cleveland was a known workaholic who ate a shitty diet and was generally in mediocre health.

>Republicans cause a depression with Harrison's retarded policies
>Cleveland is blamed for it so they can ride in on a white horse and claim to save the day
>this ensured a Republican supermajority in Congress and control of the White House for 17 years

>Congress moved to pass the Wilson-Gorman Tariff to lower the near-absurd duties set by the infamous McKinley Tariff, but lobbyists log-rolled numerous exemptions into the bill so that the average duty rate was lowered from 46 to just 42%. Cleveland was appalled and accused Congressional Democrats of betraying campaign promises, but vetoing the bill would allow the existing McKinley tariff schedule to stand so he grudgingly let it become law without his signature. The Wilson-Gorman Tariff at least had a Federal income tax as a token gesture to critics of big capital.

>The income tax amounted to a mere 3% on incomes over $4,000, and wealthy lawyer Joseph Choates called it "communistic, socialistic." Many predicted it would be speedily challenged in the courts and they were right--within a year the Supreme Court voided the income tax for violating the apportionment clause of the Constitution.

>>18522840
He was an awful fucking president. Shit the first time and even worse the second. Blaine should have won and probably would have if not for a fucking retarded preacher. Generally with one clearr exception I'm of the opinion that governors make for terrible presidents.

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>>18522469

>>18522721 (OP)
For Grover Cleveland, really fat,
Elected twice as a Democrat