NEW YORK (AP) — Among the list of U.S. presidents, several have been tapped by voters for more than one term, with Donald Trump joining the group as the 45th president and now the 47th. But only one other US president did it the way Trump will – with a four-year gap between terms.
That was Grover Cleveland, who served as the 22nd president after the 1884 election and the 24th president after the 1892 campaign.
Cleveland was governor of New York when he was nominated as the Democratic Party’s candidate for president in 1884. He was “seen as the epitome of responsibility and stability,” said Daniel Klinghard, a professor of political science at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester. , Massachusetts.
A narrow victory in the popular vote gave him enough votes in the Electoral College to be appointed president. Four years later, even though he again had a slight lead in the popular vote, he lost the Electoral College count to Republican Benjamin Harrison.
However, Cleveland continued to be well liked by the public. He won both the popular and electoral votes in 1892.
During his first term, one of the issues he took on was pushing for a reduction in tariffs imposed during the Civil War. He advocated it strongly, linked that position to the Democratic Party and won public support, Klinghard said.
“That model of a president who is an outspoken, clear spokesperson for a policy that animates the party” was emulated by future presidents like Woodrow Wilson, he said. And it helped keep Cleveland in the public eye for the years after his first term.
“This is a point where the modern idea of the national party really came into being. Cleveland had a group of skilled political operatives, very wealthy people, who saw themselves benefiting from free trade,” Klinghard said. allies have done, by portraying someone else as a challenge – as a rival.”
