Background: I was having a discussion of American politics with a friend of mine, and talk turned to GWB. My friend said something like, “GWB is a horrible president. He’s worse than all 42 men who came before him.” I pointed out that although GWB is indeed the 43rd president, he’s only the 42nd seperate man to hold the office, since Grover Cleveland was both the 22nd and 24th president. And my friend was flabbergasted. He’s a pretty smart, well-informed guy, but he had no idea that we’d had a nonconsecutive president.
So my questions are:[ul][li]Do people know that we had a president serve nonconsecutive terms?[]Do people know that that president was Grover Cleveland?[]Do they understand the impact that this has on number of presidents vs. presidential number from McKinley on?[/ul][/li]Not exactly earth-shattering, but I *am *curious.
I don’t know how many people know about Grover Cleveland. I would say, though, that “served non-consecutive terms” is the only thing most people know about him.
Is your friend American? We all learned about Cleveland’s non-consecutive presidencies in grade school; I imagine it’s much less known in the rest of the world.
[QUOTE=Mayo Speaks!]
So my questions are:[ul][li]Do people know that we had a president serve nonconsecutive terms?Do people know that that president was Grover Cleveland?[/QUOTE][/li]
I knew that part, mostly because of Grandpa Simpson. “Big deal! When I was a pup, we got spanked by Presidents till the cows came home. Grover Cleveland spanked me on two nonconsecutive occasions.”
I’d say it’s probably one of those semi-common trivia facts that a lot of people know. But since it doesn’t really matter, a lot of people have probably forgotten it, too.
It’s probably the only thing many people do know about Grover Cleveland. That and the mustache, anyway.
However, lots of people probably have never connected the number of presidencies with it. I expect it’s not that crucial a fact in most people’s minds.
Well, I know there have been a number of British Prime Ministers who served non-consecutive terms (Gladstone served, what, 5 of them?). So long as you retain the loyalty of your party’s top members, you can become Prime Minister several different times. That’s not a big deal in Britain, or in any nation with a parliamentary system. But in the U.S., a sitting President who loses an election is pretty much finished, once and for all.
There was absolutely no way the Democrats would have thought about nominating Jimmy Carter for President after his loss in 1980, and there was no chance of George H.W. Bush making a comeback in 1996.
Actually, we have had 43 men in office serving as presidents. Less common, more fun trivia - know who? (It’s almost appropriate to be asking today, of all days)
I think that if people are going to know who Grover Cleveland was, they will most likely know his non-consecutive terms. All else that comes to mind, for me, was being a trust buster, being the only president married in the White House, and being pretty lackluster as a president otherwise. Oh, and Rushmore - Max attended Grover Cleveland High School. (Yes, my perception of reality is very much based entirely on cinema history.)
Depending upon the age of the person, it wouldn’t surprise me. I had a conversation with a twenty-something a few days ago, and she had never heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
My favourite piece of Grover Cleveland trivia is that, according to Arthur Walworth’s biography of Woodrow Wilson, GC and Wilson were great friends who had a terrible falling out and GC became Wilson’s nemesis. After Cleveland died, Wilson had difficulty reconciling his feelings for Cleveland.
My favorite blink-and-you-miss-it joke from the pilot of Futurama: in the Head Museum, where the heads of famous people are preserved in jars, there’s a section of “U. S. Presidents,” and there are two Grover Cleveland heads, one on either side of Benjamin Harrison’s.
My favorite trivia for Cleveland deals with his first election, where he went up against James G. Blaine.
It was one of the dirtiest campaigns in US history. Cleveland was accused of fathering an illegitimate child (Cleveland respons was “Tell the truth,” and he admitted it – though there is some question as to whether the child was his). Blaine was caught up with the Credit Mobilier scandal. It led a newspaper to say, basically, “Cleveland has an unblemished record in office, and a scandalous one in his personal life. Blaine has an unblemished personal life, but a scandalous public life. We should elect Cleveland and put him the public life where he is so upright, and return Blaine to the private life he is undoubtedly better at filling.”
Mayo Speaks!
You’d be surprised at how many people are unaware of this (or maybe it just slips their mind.)
A rather prestigious message board entered into a discussion about the dangers of being President. The topic centered on the fact that 43 people had been President and the discussion carried on for 29 postings until a perspicacious message board member had to alert everyone about the error:
