An Honest President

...When the Maria Halpin story broke, Charles A. Dana, the pro-Blaine editor of the New York Sun, called him "a coarse debauchee who would bring his harlots with him to Washington and hire lodgings for them convenient to the White House," but his up-front admission of paternity won most voters to the view expressed by another newspaper editor, who said he "preferred Cleve- ta land's private unchasti b' to Blaine's public corruption...

...Two months later, these murky ruminations fell into place when Monica Lewinsky fell out of the Oval Office closet and the ever-helpful media plucked Grover Cleveland from the dust bin of history and made him a household name...

...After a stint of teaching, he was about to go to Ohio and try his luck in Cleveland, named for his ancesFLORENCE KING'S most recent book is The Florence King Reader (St...

...The concerns of other people and even his own affairs seem too small to be ~orth bothering about...

...if he canceled he would be called a coward...

...even one of Cleveland's arch-enemies was moved to say, "I detest him so much I don't even think his wife is beautiful...

...He won repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, but it was too late...

...Like Bill Clinton at the Vietnam Memorial, if he went he would be booed...

...Certainly one expected that the machine would make a stab at continuity, and it did, but Michael Bilandic was no Chairman Daley...

...Whatever the reason, and whatever the methodology, the 1971 election saw one precinct cast 27z votes, despite the fact that its voters had requested only z59 ballots...

...This was a man who could whip his precinct captains into such a frenzy of cajoling and strong-arming that they returned his nominating petition for the 1971 mayoral race with 975,000 signatures, representing two-thirds of the registered voters in the City of Chicago...

...James G. Blaine, "continental liar from the state of Maine...

...A stunning brunette, Frances instantly won the hearts of press and public...

...arresting poll-watchers...

...He had risen through the ranks as a party hack, and he understood intimately the possibilities and pitfalls of ward politics...

...Amid bank failures, farm foreclosures, and railroad receiverships came Cleveland's greatest crisis, the Pullman Strike led by railway-union organizer Eugene Debs...

...In 1874, Maria gave birth to a son and named him Oscar Folsom Cleveland...

...It was the first time since the Civil War that soldiers were ordered into action against American citizens, but Cleveland had one more first to go: "Coxey's Army," the rag-tag band of dispossessed silverites who made up the first march on Washington...

...It is sad, but nevertheless true," he said in his veto message, "that in the matter of procuring pensions there exists a widespread disregard for truth and good faith...

...He showed no interest in getting married, but in 1871 at the age of 34, he took up with a young widow, Maria Crofts Halpin, who also "entertained" several of his friends, among them his married law pai'mer, Oscar Folsom...

...The combination of the gold crisis and high tariffs brought on the Panic of 1893...

...A firm believer in the gold standard, he used his first State of the Union message to condemn the free coinage of silver and the practice of redeeming silver certificates in gold, predicting that it would drain gold from the Treasury to overseas banks, cause gold hoarding, and wipe out savings...

...Congress had the money power and he had the veto power, he explained, and "I believe the most important benefit that I can confer upon my country by my Presidency is to insist upon the entire independence of the executive and legislative branches...

...We love him for the enemies he has made," said his supporters at the 1884 convention...

...Despite her youth, Frances brought a polished aplomb to her first-lady duties, especially receiving lines, which she actually appeared to enjoy...

...Foreign and domestic demands for conversions of silver for gold had reduced the Treasury's gold reserves to a record low...

...Their second daughter, Esther, became the first baby to be born in the White House when her father became the first president to win a non-consecutive second term in t892...

...The House and Senate voted to award a pension to every disabled Civil War veteran with at least three months of service...

...He had one foot in heaven before the Devil knew he was dead...

...In 1896 the Democrats repudiated Cleveland and the gold standard and nominated silverite William Jennings Bryan...

...Then you would have been JOHN LILLY is a writer living in New York...

...He was also the first bachelor since Buchanan, but that would soon change...

...1.) He is an honest man, 2.) He is an honest man, 3') He is an honest man, 4.) He is an honest man...

...Cleveland reimbursed the orphanage for his expenses until the child's adoption by a prominent western New York family...

...The Albany paper described his lonely routine as "works and eats, eats and works, works and eats...

...After listening to the facts of Daley's demise (the collapse at his doctor's office, the heart failure) and a brief obituary, you would have heard the anchorman close with "an old Irish saying...

...threatening violence...

...As the campaign drew to a close, still another editor, Joseph Pulitzer, wrote: "There are four reasons to vote for Cleveland...

...Stephen Grover Cleveland was born in 1837 in Caldwell, New Jersey, the fifth of nine children of a Presbyterian minister...

...The absence of presidential cajolery and They were married in the White House, with John Philip Sousa conducting the Marine Band...

...Cleveland's victory put a Democrat in the White House for the first time since the election of James Buchanan in 1856...

...To Cleveland the strict constmctionist, the threat to the mails reduced the matter to a simple question: "Did the people elect Eugene Debs or Grover Cleveland president...

...He promptly withdrew Harrison's Hawaiian annexation treaty, which was still in committee, saying, "The United States cannot be properly put in the position of countenancing a wrong after its commission any more than of consenting to it in advance...

...She called him "Uncle Cleve...

...6~4 !~ages / $~6.95 REVIEWED BY John Lilly returned to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress...

...When his father died, 16-year~ Steve, as he was then called, left school and went to work to help support his mother and sisters...

...The American Spectator _9 September 2000 67 Grover and Frances bought a house in Princeton, where the ex-president spent the remaining 12 years of his life serving as a university trustee, writing articles for magazines, and compiling a volume of sketches on hunting and fishing...

...As Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor make clear in their masterly biography, the original Daley was very much the real thing--the classic American bigcity machine mayor...

...But even if you were eleven years old at the time, you would have realized in that moment that Chicago politics would never be the same again...

...to public hangings, and an incorruptible mayor who forced his cit}~ council to renegotiate a street- cleaning contract when he dis- \ . i covered they had made a kick-back " d deal with the highest bidder...

...Around this time he announced without explanation that he wished to be called by his middle name--his symbolic way, perhaps, of banishing Big Steve...

...As it spread, the Illinois Central was paralyzed, Chicago was edged toward anarchy, and post-office operations ground to a halt...

...Though not placid in the sluggish sense, he had a rare gift of contentment...

...When the scandal broke, Cleveland, unlike his self-appointed soul mate, tumed to his campaign manager and spoke six unparsed words: "Whatever you do, tell the truth...

...This is as honest a statement as we are likely to find of what lies uneasily in the minds of those who know Bill Clinton...

...Neither event captured the public's attention as much as the birth in 1891 of the first Cleveland baby, Ruth, who was immortalized by a candy bar that most Americans think was named for a baseball player...

...man Mao died...

...Daley was born in 19oz to a working- ! class family in Bridgeport, a South Side "Bungalow Belt" neighborhood formerly, and aptly, known as Hardserabble...

...Public and press largely agreed, but the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic, forerunner of today's American Legion) savaged him...

...He became a Buffa- / ~ lo institution: a lawyer who refilsed / -~ to defend anyone he knew to be / ',:~ guilty, a sheriff who put an end An Honest President: The Life and Presidencies of Grover Cleveland H. paul Jeffers William Morrow / 385 pages / $27 R E V I E W E D BY Florence King B ill Clinton usually identifies with FDR and JFK, but a time came t when his narcissism inexplicably receded in favor of a president most Americans knew nothing about...

...In fairness to the author, it could hardly be otherwise...

...Apart ~ 68 S ep t e m b e r 2 o o o - The American Spectator...

...Psychohistory requires a certain degree of torment, but Cleveland was as simple and hearty, as the big German meals he enjoyed in Buffalo's restaurants...

...Cleveland vetoed it, arguing that the bill was so loosely worded that it covered men who had not seen combat or even reached the front, and might be used for present disabilities unrelated to the war...

...Yes, said Cleveland, it was true...

...If Daley didn't necessarily order the vote stealing directly, the pressure he placed on his ward bosses--and which they in turn applied at the precinct level-- was enough to get the machine rolling...

...Perhaps it was just force of habit after generations of practice in the black art of election theft: accompanying voters into the booth to "assist" them in their decision...

...He called for the suspension of "free silver," but as a strict Constitutional constructionist he refused to use pressure and patronage to win on the issue...

...And Daley was Chairman Dale}': That was the whole point...

...Next he gored a sacred cow...

...Mayor Daley--Richard J. Daley, who had dominated Chicago's all-powerful Democratic machine for over twentyone years--had died in office...

...The Princeton years were more notable in another way: Frances had two more babies, bofli boys, the last born when Big Steve was 66...

...She told Cleveland he was the father and he offered to pay child support, but when she began drinking and neglecting him, a judge committed her to a mental asylum and put the boy in an orphanage...

...The draft law permitted the hiring of substitutes and he had hired one because he was the sole support of his mother and sisters...

...When it was learned that he planned to return captured Confederate battle flags to Southern states, the rancor mounted, causing his advisors to question whether he should go ahead with his already scheduled appearance at the CAR's convention...

...The scandal remained dormant while he was governor (he won by the largest majority in New York history), and so, apparently, did Big Steve...

...In late 1997 a newsmagazine reported that he had become fascinated with Graver Cleveland, seeing in him an underappreciated reformer ahead of his times and something of a "soul mate...

...It deserted him only when he had to cope, not once but twice, with the unique probIem of being an ex-president: After the long exercise of power [he wrote], the ordinary affairs of life seem petty and commonplace...

...voting for non-citizens, non-residents, non-people (the dead forming, as they will, a particularly quiescent constituency...

...IT]he race after the pensions offered in this bill would not only stimulate the weakness and pretended incapacity for labor, but put further premium on dishonesty and mendacity...

...When Maria was released from the asylum, Cleveland gave her the money to start a business and she disappeared from his life, eventually remarrying...

...His 1 reputation for probity with public money would soon get him elected governor of New York...

...and, when all else failed, just walking into a voting booth and pulling the Democratic straight-ticket lever over and over...

...In his off hours he was known as "Big Steve" for the 3o0 pounds he carried on his medium-height frame, acquired in Buffalo's German restaurants and beer parlors...

...Clinton went and was booed, but Cleveland canceled for a reason that his "soul mate" could never understand: "I might, ifI alone were concerned, submit to the insult to which it is quite openly asserted I would be helplessly subjected if present...

...An ex-Presiden{ practicing law or going into business is like a locomotive hauling a delivery wagon...

...Cleveland served as his executor and looked after his widow and lo-year-old daughter, Frances...

...N The Chairman With the Bridgeport Sensibility American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor Little, Browr...

...He achieved another first with his 1888 re-election bid, winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College to the gnomish Benjamin Harrison, whose main achievements were the Sherman Silver Purchase Act and the overthrow of Hawaii's Queen Liliuokalani...

...When you're Mayor of Chicago and Chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party...

...Martin's...

...then) when Chair~ f you were dumbly glued to the reruns on Channel 2, Chicago, the afternoon of December 2o, 1976, you would have seen news anchor Walter Jacobson (if memory serves) break in with a piece of truly mind-boggling news...

...well, you're pret b, much going to get your way, no matter what...

...She writes "The Misanthrope's Corner" column for National Review...

...They were married in the White House--another first--with John Philip Sousa conducting the Marine Band...

...Over and over we were told that during the campaign of 1884, Republicans leaked the story that Democrat Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child...

...He has lost his sense of proportion...

...And after Bilandic, all bets were off: a woman (Jane Byme), followed by the mediocre Harold Washington...

...And when election day rolled around that year, the same precinct captains still had the energy (and--remarkably, given the roaring landslide--the inclination) to engage in a characteristically massive and bald-faced orgy of voting fraud...

...Without consulting Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld, he sent in federal troops and placed Chicago under martial law...

...but I should bear with me there the people's highest office, the dignity of which I must protect...

...H onesty puzzles the flexible majority of men and Cleveland's was no exception...

...An Honest President provides a thorough overview of Grover Cleveland's public life, but readers who enjoy "psychohistory" may find it disappointing...

...As governor, his efforts to restructure ci b administrations to root out bossism earned him the hatred of Tammany Hall and the attention of the national Democratic Part...

...In 1875 at the height of the imbroglio, Oscar Folsom was thrown from his carriage and killed...

...It was like being in Peking (as we still called it...

...66 September 2000 _9 The American Spectator Next came the charge that he had shirked military duty in the Civil War...

...arm-twisting enabled Western silver interests to prevail and left gold-standard congressmen pondering what, to their way of thinking, was a lack of leadership...

...Even Richard Daley fils--Richard M. Daley, the current mayor--has turned out to be no substitute for the real thing...

...Reform was in the air and Cleveland emerged as the John McCain of the Gilded Age, nominated on the third ballot to run against GOP Sen...

...In 1886, amid rumors that he planned to marry the widow of his old friend and law partner, Oscar Folsom, the 49-year-old President announced his engagement to her al-yearold daughter, Frances, whom he called "Frank...

...What the media did not dwell on was how he handled it...