My favorite radio show, Says You!, lets listeners submit questions. One of their recurring categories is Odd Man Out; from a list of four, you have to figure out what three of them have in common that the fourth one doesn’t.
I submitted this.
Who’s the odd man out of:
George Lazenby
Pope Pius XII
Hugh Downs
Benjamin Harrison
They didn’t use the question, but, yeah, I knew about Cleveland.
I must admit I’ve never understood this formulation.
Not about GC serving non-consecutively; that part I get. And I know he held the 22nd and 24th presidencies.
But I fail to see how that makes him two presidents. People always said Reagan was the 40th president, and so on, up to GWB being the 43rd president. But those counts only hold true if Grover Cleveland was two separate presidents, which I kind of doubt, the evidence from Futurama aside.
If we’re counting his terms, well, why wasn’t Franklin Roosevelt FOUR presidents? The count would be way over 43 by now if we counted terms.
I do understand trhat people are trying to assign some kind of added significance to Cleveland’s nonconsecutive terms. But GWB is not the 43rd person to hold the office just because Cleveland held it twice and we’re not counting everyone else’s second terms (or third, or fourth, in the case of FDR). And since the definition of “president” is “person who holds that particular office”, seems like GWB must be counted as the 42nd president, Reagan as 39th, sorry Reagan fans (when he was elected there was much chest-thumping over the round number of 40), and Cleveland as “the 22nd president, whose second term came at a later time than usual through interesting circumstances, but who remains one human being and the 22nd to hold that office”.
Sailboat
All I remember is how the Republicans taunted
Ma, ma! Where’s my pa?
Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!
After winning the election, the Democrats retorted,
Hurrah for Maria, hurrah for the kid.
We voted for Grover and we’re d——n glad we did.
This was in such a prudish era that Thomas Hardy wrote “the Wh—re of Babylon.”
History Channel.
I know about the non-consecutiveness, but I remember Grover Cleveland mainly because his name is a Muppet and a city in Ohio.
Okay, now please give us the answer. I know too little about who preceeded and succeeded Hugh Downs.
No, no no. The correct response was:
Blaine, Blaine
James G Blaine
A continental liar from the State of Maine!
By the way, my favorite piece of Cleveland trivia is that Frances Folsom, the futrure Mrs Cleveland was living across the street from my ex-Brother-in-Law’s house just before she moved to the White House.
I agree with Sailboat. It makes absolutely no sense to call George W. Bush the 43rd president.
You *remember *it? Wow, I didn’t know you were that old.
Grover Cleveland and his non-consecutive presidancy was the subject of at least one Final Jeopardy. The only one I ever got before the answer was revealed.
How do you know the odd man out wasn’t Pius XII?
[spoiler]In 1960, Hugh Downs was the announcer for the Tonight Show. In a famous incident, Jack Paar (the host) criticized NBC for censoring a joke of his and walked off the show, leaving Downs to take over. He said there had to be a better way to make a living than to be the center of such controversies. A month later he came back, saying he’d looked and there wasn’t.
As near as I can find out, Downs was the host all that time. George Lazenby, Hugh Downs and Benjamin Harrison all had jobs where they replaced, and were then replaced by, the same person.
I don’t have to explain about Lazenby, do I?[/spoiler]
Yep, I learned about it in 1968 here .
Well, there is the oddity of the two Kings of England who served non-consecutive terms (Henry VI and Edward IV).
The way I heard it in high school history class was as simultaneously published campaign taunts:
The Democrats had “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the Continental Liar from the state of Maine!”
The Republicans had “Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa?” all by itself.
Post-election, the Democrats added, “He’s in the White House, Ha Ha Ha!”
The other thing to remember about Cleveland is that he was the only democrat to hold the seat between Johnson (left office 1869) and Wilson (took office 1913)
To properly amend it, I suppose we would have to say that GWB heads the 43d presidential administration, Cleveland having overseen two by virtue of haveing headed it twice, non-consecutively.
So we’ve had 42 men oversee 43 administrations that span 55 4-year terms.
Also that he was the first candidate to receive a plurality of the popular vote three consecutive times.
There was a bill passed recently authorizing a set of $1 coins with presidential faces on them (4 a year for 10 years; unless someone dies in the interrim). It was stipulated that there will be 2 Cleveland coins.
Why does the VP get sworn in before the POTUS anyway?
Interestingly, in 1933 after FDR’s inauguration, the mint issued a coin declaring him the 31st president. That should have settled it, but no, he is regarded as the 32nd president.
Probably because the presidential inauguration is the main event.
When I think of Grover Cleveland I think immediately of Bathtubs.