Grover Cleveland

In the modern-day, Grover Cleveland is mainly known as the sole president to serve his two terms non-consecutively. In other, smaller circles, however, he is known for different, more substantial things. Among right-wing libertarians, he is known for his economic policies, which they view with admiration and agreement. Among political cynics, he is one of the few presidents they can prop up and support, as they admire his honesty. And among historians, he is thought of as an above-average president. However, these assessments - especially those appealing to Cleveland's supposed economic competence and supposed skills at governing - are all extremely faulty. In reality, Cleveland was one of the worst presidents in American history.

Cleveland replaced Chester A. Arthur on March 4, 1885. As president, Cleveland demonstrated a few redeeming qualities that keep him from being lower on my list. He established the Interstate Commerce Commission, a government agency tasked with regulating the railroad industry. Also to his credit, he attempted to repeal the Bland-Allison Act. Passed over the veto of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878, the Bland-Allison Act required the federal government to purchase between $2,000,000 and $4,000,000 worth of silver from mines in the southern and western US and to then mint the silver into coins. By ordering the government to continually produce money, the Bland-Allison Act likely worsened inflation. So, I appreciate Cleveland's attempts to repeal the law. He also withdrew from an imperialistic treaty negotiated by the Arthur Administration in which Nicaragua ceded a portion of its land to the US in exchange for the construction of a canal there.

Most importantly, Cleveland, on multiple occasions, used federal troops to disperse anti-Chinese race riots. However, not only do his redeeming traits end here, but he also mistreated Chinese-Americans outside of this. For example, Cleveland, in 1888, signed the Scotts Act. Under this law, people in China who immigrated to the US were, if they left their new home country for any reason and to any other nation, not allowed to return to America. His record on civil rights was poor in other regards. For example, in 1887, Cleveland signed the Dawes Act, which gave the federal government control over land policies on indigenous reservations. Throughout his presidency, Cleveland also urged Native Americans to "assimilate".

And while Cleveland signed atrocious bills like the Dawes Act and Scotts Act that stripped non-white Americans of significant rights, he vetoed and repealed various good, reasonable laws. For starters, Cleveland, in 1887, repealed the Tenure of Office Act. The Tenure of Office Act, passed in 1867 to prevent Democrat Andrew Johnson from firing Republican officials leftover from the Lincoln years, required the president to receive the approval of the Senate in order to dismiss a member of the cabinet. This law was a necessary and logical restriction that prevented the executive branch from becoming a dictatorship where the president could fire competent and popular officials on a whim in order to reduce the criticism he faced and to strengthen his hold over the state. But Cleveland threw away his concern for liberty and small government to dismantle this policy.

Throughout his presidency, Cleveland also vetoed various bills that would have provided our country's veterans with pensions. During Cleveland's presidency, Texas also suffered a severe drought that left the state's farmers poor and desolate. When Cleveland was presented with a bill that would have merely allowed the federal government to send seeds to the struggling farmers to help them revive their businesses, he vetoed it, dooming the farmers to continual deprivation.

His economic policies only get worse from here. As previously mentioned, Cleveland famously served two non-consecutive terms. Cleveland initially won the presidency in 1884, when he, a Democrat, defeated the Republican James G. Blaine. In 1892, he secured his second term in a race against Benjamin Harrison. Harrison and Cleveland had run against each other in the previous election, 1888. Yet, few people who know Cleveland for his non-consecutive terms actually know why he lost in 1888. Harrison defeated Cleveland that year because, during Cleveland's first term, he reduced tariffs to such an extent that an unemployment crisis broke out. As a result, many of the unemployed workers voted for Harrison in droves come election day 1888, desperately wanting Cleveland out of office.

When Cleveland returned to the White House on March 4, 1893, the country was embroiled in a severe economic crisis known as the Panic of 1893. Aside from repealing the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, a law that required the federal government to print 4,500,000 ounces of silver each month, and on which Cleveland blamed the recession, Cleveland did nothing to address the crisis. He sat back in Oval Office and allowed people to live miserably in the depths of economic despair

Cleveland actually did very little of note during his second term aside from repealing the Sherman Silver Purchase Act and having an atrocious response to the Panic of 1893. Though, when the Pullman Strike of 1894 broke out in Illinois, Cleveland, actively against the desires of Illinois' governor, sent troops to suppress the strike.

Ultimately, Cleveland was a vile president who oppressed Chinese immigrants, tried to cement the federal government's control over indigenous Americans, pushed the country into economic despair and did nothing to address a second crisis of economic devastation, crushed a workers' rights movement, and helped expand the president's power past its reasonable limits. Cleveland's positive rating by historians is, in all honesty, one of the greatest mysteries of American historiography.