Cleveland Rocks
REVIEW: ‘A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland’ by Troy Senik
A statue of Grover Cleveland / Wikimedia Commons Tevi Troy • September 25, 2022 4:59 am
Only 14 men have served two full terms as president of the United States. Of those 14, Grover Cleveland is perhaps the least well-known. Which is odd. Our two-term chief executives are some of the most famous presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. But all of them are fairly familiar to the general educated reader. Grover Cleveland, in contrast, falls in the category of the mostly forgotten facial-hair-presidents-of-the-late-19th century.
Cleveland is so unknown that he doesn’t have a monument or even a statue in Washington. He does merit one (so far) untouched claim to fame: In contrast to the other members of the two-term club, his service was nonconsecutive. Cleveland exited his first term after a close defeat to Benjamin Harrison. He then turned around and beat Harrison in the next election. He returned to the White House, making him one of only three presidents, along with Jackson and Roosevelt, to win the popular vote at least three times. Upon leaving the White House the first time, Cleveland’s wife Frances declared, “We are coming back just four years from today.”
Troy Senik’s new biography of Cleveland, A Man of Iron, shows that Cleveland is unappreciated. Senik, a former White House speechwriter and conservative think tanker, admired Cleveland from a young age, visiting the president’s birthplace when he was 16. Senik has good reason to admire Cleveland, as the book shows. Cleveland had a fascinating backstory. Born into poverty, he had one of the most meteoric rises to the presidency, moving from mayor of Buffalo to governor of New York to president in a few short years. Perhaps Theodore Roosevelt—also from New York—is the only president to rival the rapidity of Cleveland’s rise. Cleveland also had a sex scandal, fathering a child out of wedlock, yet still managed to get elected. And he had a
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