By DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) – In the list of U.S. presidents, several have been elected by voters to serve more than one term, with Donald Trump joining the group as the 45th president and now also the 47th. But only one other U.S. president did it the way Trump will: with a four-year gap between terms.
That was Grover Cleveland, who was the 22nd president after the 1884 election and the 24th after the 1892 campaign.
Cleveland was governor of New York when he was elected Democratic Party candidate for president in 1884. He was “seen as the epitome of responsibility and stability,” said Daniel Klinghard, professor of political science at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.
A narrow victory in the popular vote gave him enough votes in the Electoral College to be named president. Four years later, although he again had a slight lead in the popular vote, he lost the Electoral College recount to Republican Benjamin Harrison.
However, Cleveland remained well regarded by the public. He won both the popular and electoral votes in 1892.
During his first term, among the issues he addressed: pushing for a reduction in the tariffs that had been put in place during the Civil War. He advocated strongly for it, tying that stance to the Democratic Party and winning public support, Klinghard said.
“That model of a president becoming a spokesman for a policy that animates the party” was emulated by future presidents such as Woodrow Wilson. And it helped keep Cleveland in the public eye for years following his first term.
“This is the moment when the modern notion of the national party became a reality. Cleveland had a group of skilled political operatives, very wealthy people, who stood to benefit from free trade,” Klinghard said. “And they spent a lot of time keeping the Cleveland name in front of the electorate, much like Trump’s allies have done, dismissing anyone else as a challenge, as a rival.”
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