Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character

by Alyn Brodsky. St. Martin's Press, 485 pages.

When it comes to studying American presidents, there's nothing sexy about Grover Cleveland. Study Lincoln, you get the Civil War; study Nixon, you get Watergate. Study Grover Cleveland and you get tarriff battles and the repeal of the Sherman Silver Act. Not quite the stuff they make Hollywood movies about. Yet Alyn Brodsky's charming pro-Cleveland biography is out to argue that we should all be giving America'as 22nd / 24th President a lot more credit. To Mr. Brodsky, there is something sexy about Cleveland's presidency. "He insisted on doing what was morally expedient," writes Mr. Brodsky. "Even if by doing so...it meant placing his political career in jeopardy." This, according to Mr. Brodsky, made Cleveland a "political freak." Cleveland, in other words, is the epitome of the Hollywood president - moral, idealistic, incorruptible - the sort found in blockbusters and rarely in the White House.



To enjoy the story of Grover Cleveland, one needs to possess an unabiding interest in both the Gilded Age and America's domestic affairs. Cleveland presided over the White House on the eve of a new American foreign policy that would see the country become entangled in international disputes; he was against this direction and sought to avoid it at all costs (still, even he couldn't keep from being dragged into the global village to stop the annexation of Hawaii and to face off against England during the Venezuelan Boundry Dispute). But for the most part, this is an American story about American issues: the divided Democrats, their political rivalries, a country's economic woes, labor problems. Most dominant is the issue of currency: Mr. Brodsky makes a convincing case that Cleveland is largely responsible for keeping America on the gold standard at a time when silver fans tried to get things to go the other way.

It's an engaging story that has a refreshing, distinctive viewpoint: Mr. Brodsky does not try to hide his agenda here, which is to rehabilitate Cleveland in the eyes of the world. To him, Cleveland is the moral hero who spent twelve years (eight in the White House) holding firm against a country whose political system threatened to destroy him at every turn. And it almost succeeded - Cleveland left Washington in 1896 as a reviled President and it took just under a decade for him to be rehabilitated in the eyes of his successors. Then he was promptly forgotten again, overshadowed by the 20th century's more dynamic leaders - Wilson, FDR, Kennedy, etc. This view of Cleveland can certainly be disputed (and no doubt has been), but Mr. Brodsky's stance is both passionate and well-researched, which makes for an entertaining read.


Still, this is more a biography of Cleveland's presidency, then Cleveland himself. His personal life gets very little attention and we are left to read between the lines if we hope for any facts of Mr. Cleveland behind the scenes. His children get very little print time, as does his wife. Perhaps this is because at the time of writing, Mr. Brodsky was planning a biography of Frances Folsom, who Cleveland married during his first term. It's possible he was saving the personal details for that book, which doesn't seem to have ever been written (Mr. Brodsky sadly died in April, 2011). This is unfortunate as there is something intriguing about the Grover - Frances relationship, a May / December romance that led to Cleveland becoming the only President to be married in the White House and to Frances Folsom becoming the country's youngest first lady. There are also several charming anecdotes about her, including the fact that when they left the White House for the first time, Folsom apparently told the servants to keep the place safe until their return, which she predicted would happen four years later - which of course they did.

Having taken it upon myself to brush up on my Gilded Age political history, I can say that Mr. Brodsky's contribution is a valuable continuation of the narrative that (for me) began with Kenneth Ackerman's Dark Horse and continued with Thomas Reeve's biography of Chester Arthur. Taken as a trilogy, one gets a frank depiction of the behind-the-scenes working of American's two political parties, complete with re-occurring characters and re-emerging themes (Cleveland, for instance, continued the work of reforming the civil service that was started by President Arthur). It's becoming an intriguing way to study a historical period and I'd have to say that Mr. Brodsky's book may be of value to those who not only are interesting in Cleveland himself, but also in the era in which he lived.

Related Links:
"Robert Todd Lincoln: A Man in his Own Right" by John Groff
"Dark Hourse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of James Garfield" by Kenneth Ackerman
"Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester A. Arthur" by Thomas Reeves
"Benjamin Harrison" by Charles Calhoun