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The stark contrast between second chance presidents

As an icy wind blew through the nation’s capital, a former president ousted by voters four years earlier took the oath of office again. Highlighting a period of political uncertainty during which populism was on the rise, the new president’s inaugural address focused on trade, economic stability and rebuilding the character of the nation.

“There can be no doubt that our astonishing achievements as a people and the robust strength of our country have given rise to heedlessness of the laws governing our national health care system, which we can no more evade than human life can escape the laws of God and nature,” he said. the new president in his speech at the US Capitol.

If it’s not obvious, this sentence was not uttered by Donald Trump, but by Grover Cleveland, who until Monday’s inauguration was the only president to serve non-consecutive terms. Cleveland, a New Yorker like Trump but a Democrat unlike Trump, had first won the presidency in 1884 but was defeated for re-election after one term by Republican Benjamin Harrison. But by 1892 the country had soured on Harrison’s leadership and Cleveland, easily rebranded by his party, won the rematch.

Cleveland was inaugurated in March, not January, but Washington’s weather 132 years ago was eerily similar to this week’s: just below freezing, with some snow on the ground. Then, as now, the country’s precarious economic condition was top of mind for many Americans. And both Cleveland and Trump returned to office in part out of a kind of political nostalgia for the policies — in Cleveland’s case, civil service reform, support for a gold standard and tariff cuts — that they both championed during their first terms pleaded.

Trump is a populist’s populist, who speaks in overly optimistic terms about the great future that awaits America under his leadership, without much talk of compromise. By comparison, Cleveland comes across as responsible but hectoring, using the inaugural address to remind Americans of their own virtues. Fully invested in his own political comeback story, Trump even spent his speech touting his performance in the election (and falsely complained in his remarks later in the day that the previous election had been stolen from him). Cleveland makes no mention of elections or dirty politics. Instead, his speech is intended to be read in newspapers and pamphlets, written in long, complex sentences. Trump’s simple sentences, part of the two-pronged effort to tone down presidential rhetoric, are meant to be clipped for social media and TV news.

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Both second-chance presidents spoke about their mandates, albeit in strikingly different ways. Cleveland spoke of the authority entrusted to him by his fellow citizens and pledged his “obedience” to “the mandate of my countrymen” to be in their service. Trump, on the other hand, uses the modern understanding of the term as a validation of his political platform and as a license to freely pursue his agenda. “My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally undo a terrible betrayal and all the many betrayals that have taken place and to give back to the people their faith, their wealth, their democracy and even their freedom,” he said Monday.

Not surprisingly, Trump peppered his speech with his typical over-the-top promises and exaggerated claims about what his administration would accomplish for the American people. “America’s golden age begins now,” Trump began Monday. The president promised that his administration will “lower prices,” “end the epidemic of chronic disease” and “eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks” in the United States.

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“We are on the cusp of the four greatest years in American history. With your help, we will restore America’s promise and rebuild the nation we love,” he said. “And we like it so much.”

Cleveland made no such grand promises, choosing instead to lecture his fellow citizens about government paternalism (what we would now call the welfare state, an idea only then gaining traction in Western democracies) and fiscal responsibility.

“The lessons of paternalism must be unlearned and the better lesson must be learned that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their government, its function does not include the support of the people,” Cleveland said, wagging his finger about government waste.

Aside from the different standards for inaugural speeches in the 19th century, there was a reason for Cleveland’s stern rhetoric. Just days before his term began, an economic crisis unfolded when a major railroad company went bankrupt because the U.S. Treasury Department’s gold reserves were depleted. The sense that the United States’ impressive economic growth after the Civil War was ebbing away is central to Cleveland’s comments.

“The strong man who, in the confidence of a solid health care system, carries out the strictest activities of life and rejoices in the hardness of constant labor, may still have lurking the unnoticed disease that condemns him to sudden collapse,” he said .

But while Cleveland has blasted trade protectionism as a practice that “undermines the self-reliance of our people and replaces instead dependence on government favoritism,” Trump has made more and higher tariffs the centerpiece of his economic remedy.

“I will immediately begin overhauling our trade system to protect American workers and families. Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tax and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens,” Trump said Monday, touting a policy that free trader Cleveland would have abhorred.

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As Trump concluded his speech, which sounded more like a campaign speech than a traditional inauguration, he offered a recap in short, parallel sentences of the big things that will happen during his time in office. “We will be prosperous, we will be proud, we will be strong and we will win like never before,” he said. “We will not be overcome, we will not be intimidated, we will not be broken, and we will not fail.” The boundaries of America under the steady guidance of Trump’s magnificent hand will be impossible to define, if you believe him.

Cleveland, from a different time and perhaps realizing the limits of what a top executive can do in four measly years, closed with a more eloquent examination of presidential sobriety – all the more gripping when you consider recent presidential excesses.

“The oath I now take to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States not only impressively defines the great responsibility I assume, but suggests obedience to constitutional commands as the rule by which my official conduct should be,” Cleveland said. . “I will, to the best of my ability and within my sphere of duty, preserve the Constitution by loyally protecting every grant of federal power contained therein, by defending all its limitations when attacked by impatience and restlessness, and by abolishing its limitations and reservations. to coerce in favor of the states and the people.”

Read more at De Uitzending

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