Grover Cleveland was an asshole

Politics & Elections
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(I figured this is a P&E topic, since it deals with a politician. But he’s not a modern day politician, so maybe “great debates”? Or the Pit? I’m afraid it is a little “ranty”. I defer to the mod loop on whether this should be moved).

I’ve been needing to get this off my chest.

Grover Cleveland was an asshole.

No, I didn’t know him. And, no, he didn’t do anything personal to me. But the man who was the first President to win two non consecutive terms, at every crucial juncture, did something odious.

Civil War. His brothers go on to fight for the Union. Grover? He pays for a Polish man to serve in his stead.

That’s not nothing. It was controversial. That sort of thing led to draft riots. Shirking his duty, when that was an actual thing.

Pshaw, you say?

It gets worse. Much worse.

He’s running for President. A woman comes forward. Says he date raped her (well, not in those terms, but that’s what she described). She bore his child.

What does he do? He has her thrown in a mental institution. His explanation for the baby? She was a whore who slept around; he was doing her a favor by admitting parentage.

(Lest you think politics only got ugly once Lee Atwater went to work, his detractors during his first run for Office turned it into a chant. “Ma? Ma? Where’s my Pa?” Once he won, his supporters turned the tragedy into a tawdry refrain: “Where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!”)

Still not convinced?

Grover was a big shot lawyer. One of his partners was a man named Oscar Folsom. They were close friends, socialized together, that sort of thing.

They were close enough that Grover met Oscar’s little daughter, Frances, when she was just an infant, and they were close enough that Grover became the executor for Oscar’s estate after he unexpectedly died when Frances was 11.

Then, 10 years later, while serving as President, ole’ Grover (he was 49 years old) married Frances. They used the White House.

As I said, Grover Cleveland = asshole.

Glad to get that cleared up.

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Fun fact: the firm where he worked is still in operation today under the name Hodgson Russ LLP.

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Fun fact: Frances called Grover Uncle Cleve as a child.

And as for his date rape?

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By today’s standards, many people of previous generations, prominent or not, would be considered assholes.

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I’m not saying that there weren’t a LOT of men in those days who had inconvenient women committed. I’m just saying that even then it was an asshole move.

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I think that’s a cop out.

We might, for example, excuse a person’s racism from the 19th century because there was an extreme level of racism in that society. But I can find plenty of examples of people who pushed back against, or outright fought, that bigotry in its own time. In contrast to the “southern slave owner who didn’t know better” there are also people from the antebellum south who did know better, and who we can find rejecting those ideas.

As for Grover, I don’t think his behavior was acceptable even then. He groomed a child from birth. He also raped a woman, and then had no compunction about ruining her life to satisfy his own ambitions. He was craven and selfish.

Fuck Grover Clevaland.

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AND had her son (his own progeny!) put up for adoption.

AND said that he wasn’t the father, but made arrangements for the boy because he was the only unmarried guy among the men she had been fucking. See? He was such a good person.

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(Stating the well known facts here:) When he ran for reelection, he lost the Electoral College but lost the popular vote, the first time in US history that happened. Not accepting the lesson of the loss, he would run for another try at a second term, serving non-consecutive terms. The arrogant asshole.

Any similarities to our current times are absolutely intentional, from the sex scandals, war non-record, election losses, etc. Somebody should come up with one of those “Incredible Coincidences” list like they did with Kennedy and Lincoln.

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Fake news! (And I assume that you mean “won” the Electoral College),

In 1876, Rutherford Hayes won the electoral college but lost the popular vote.

Cleveland beat James Blaine in 1884 by 219-182 in the Electoral College and 4,914,482 to 4,856,905 in the popular vote.

Blaine was no peach, but I wonder what might have happened had the female vote been a factor.

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Learning about Grover Cleveland has helped me to realize that I’m not such a bad guy after all. Thanks for the pick-me-up!

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Gah! Of course I meant he won the electoral college-- that’s what I get for typing on a tiny screen. Thanks for the correction.

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Still far, far from Worst Asshole Ever to be Elected President (twice, non-consecutive)

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Oh I hear you. But if Trump doesn’t show up to collect the prize, it goes to the runner up.

There actually are many parallels between Cleveland’s America and our own. It was the Gilded Age, after all. And it was rife with corruption.

Grover’s first opponent for President, James Blaine, was known for the Mulligan Letters.

See, Blaine (who had served as Secretary of State) had directed some land grants to Union Pacific railroad. In exchange, it bought some Little Rock and Fort Smith railroad bonds from Blaine - which were near worthless - for $64,000 (a couple million dollars today).

Blaine denied any wrongdoing.

Then a clerk (it’s always the clerk) showed up and testified before Congress. James Mulligan said that he had in his possession letters, written by Blaine, that admitted to his shenanigans.

Famously, one of them ended with the line “burn this letter”

That night, Mulligan went home. He later reported that he was confronted by Blaine, who took the letters from him!

Blaine, said “that’s nonsense”! He gave them to me, and you can’t see them.

And then later on Blaine read parts of them in Congress. “See? I just read a portion that was totally mundane. There’s nothing wrong with that part I read to you.”

Against that came Grover.

He was actually called Grover the Good. He was known as a reformer, because he supported changing political appointments from a spoils system to a merit based civil service system (hey, another parallel to today, sort of: Trump is the first president in nearly 150 years who wants to revert back).

But even that strikes me as cynical. Grover was running at the end of Chester Arthur’s term (he of the fabulous muttonchops and fashion sense). Arthur only became president because James Garfield was killed by a crazy person who thought he deserved a political appointment - no wonder Cleveland didn’t want that role anymore.

And so he was supposed to be the good guy. And when he was confronted with this news of an illegitimate child, his response was “Tell the truth “ then lied like a motherfucker by saying that the kid wasn’t his, and he only provided for it because he was unmarried and the woman who bore the kid had been with married men.

Some good guy he was.

(All the while watching the child he was looking after to see if she was ready for him to take as a wife. Did I mention that he bought Frances Folsom a baby carriage (er, pram for you fancy people) as a gift when she was first born?)

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I’ve recently fallen into the history rabbit hole as presented by Netflix, Prime video, authors such as Chernow, Ambrose, McCullah, etc. and other tunnels where the rabbit hole leads. The amount of assholery that is left out of the history classes taught in schools is mind boggling. The World Wars, Civil War, Vietnam, Civil Rights The Cold War (and on and on) were nothing like what we were taught. Thankfully, there were some highly principled characters that saved us from the assholes (for the time being). Yet, we still have a bunch of elected fools who insist on preserving the sanitized versions that protect the assholes.

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Lots of people paid a substitute to go in their place in the Civil War. Hence the call that it was ‘a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight’

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He probably would have gotten along well with Pablo Picasso.

Anyway, Cleveland’s “issues” have been known for decades. His presidency was definitely scandalous, which was known even then.

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I don’t remember where I read this bit of trivia, but Grover Cleveland used to piss out the window of his office to save himself the bother of walking to the men’s room.

Google denies this, but it specifically says Cleveland “.did not urinate out of the Oval Office window.” And I recall what I read saying that the alleged pissing took place at his office before he was president.

So,…yeah, nasty.

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What are you referring to?

In his first term, probably the worst thing he did was support high tariffs (hey, another parallel to today!)

In his second term, he was hampered by the worst depression until the Great Depression. And he didn’t really have the tools (or the foresight) to deal with it.

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That “Ma, ma, where’s my Pa?” thing, for instance.

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So, a former asshole President gave his name to a muppet? The current asshole president gets his skin tone from a muppet.