My son Chris reads biographies of the American Presidents and sometimes texts me photographs of striking passages.
This comes from "A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland" (commission earned):
Cleveland was "in office" as the sheriff of Erie Country. Later he was mayor of Buffalo, then Governor of New York, and finally the 22nd and 24th President of the United States.
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We would have a lot less crime and stupidity if our leaders were men who could pull the lever themselves.
One thing is for certain...there will never be a better Presidential First Name than Grover.
We need more public executions.
Judge Smails: I've sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn't want to do it. I felt I owed it to them.
The sentence "He'd already paid another man to bear his cross before" probably refers to Cleveland's hiring a substitute during the Civil war. Cleveland was 26 in 1863, and unmarried. Prime fighting material.
Cleveland comes off more as a 19th century libertarian than a Leftwing Democrat. Vetoing spending bills. Refusing to annex Hawaii. Reluctant to use Federal power against the states. Didn't seem to like labor unions or soft money.
Chris reads these bios so we don't have to.
Higgledy piggledy,
Benjamin Harrison,
Twenty-third president
Was, and, as such,
Served between Clevelands and
Save for this trivial
Idiosyncrasy,
Didn't do much.
You knew who you were then
Girls were girls and men were men
Mister, we could use a man like Grover Cleveland again.
I'm hoping someone can recommend a TR bio - we visited Roosevelt NP this summer - TR apparently said that if he hadn't come to North Dakota and lived where the NP is now, he wouldn't have become president - and were stunned by its beauty. He's such a fascinating character; if I didn't know he existed IRL, I would've had to assume he was literary.
"I'm hoping someone can recommend a TR bio "
Edmund Morris's three volume is the gold standard for aTR bio. Very readable as well-
Grover from Sesame Street ... was most easily roused to wrath when someone was misquoting the alphabet. There was thus some irony..."
"... when, in later years, Grover's alphabetical opponents dubbed him 'The Snuffleupagus Editor,' both because the label could have boomeranged in his favor, few people of course being able to correctly spell Snuffleupagus, and because, when masked, Super Grover was an especially faint-hearted grammar corrector.
In case Chris hasn't read it yet, I recommend: The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur by Scott S. Greenberger
I wrote about it here: https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/ny-corruption-hochul-benjamin-and
"NY Corruption: Hochul, Benjamin, and Chester A. Arthur -- Can You Tell the Difference?" (from 2022)
Planned Perphood? Capitol Punishment... Capitol is very PC.
Public Executions. Now there's a thought. Put them television at $100 per (or whatever) to be donated to the victims families.
Even better have them literally in public to crowds of thousands of also paying watchers to be donated to various charities. But more importantly, to show children and young adults the wages of murder.
Thanks. Amexpat!
The Edmund Morris bio of TR is very readable, but that's partially because TR led an interesting life. I'm not knowledgeable about Grover Cleveland, but I get the sense that if his bio is exciting reading, it's more a triumph of the biographer than of his subject.......From the info given here, he seems like a decent man. In the late 19th century, Presidents tended to be stodgy characters. I think more governmental power was seated in the legislative branch back then. In any event, the people who changed the world were the industrialists. It was at this time that humanity made its great leap forward. The movers and the shakers were Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan et al.
The CSPAN bus went to the president’s grave sites. I don’t know if they went to all of them.
"In case Chris hasn't read it yet, I recommend: The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur by Scott S. Greenberger"
He's read that one
I read that book last spring in anticipation of a second non-consecutive presidency and found it a fascinating read. Far more striking than Cleveland’s reluctance to perform executions was his secret surgery for what was thought to be oral cancer during his second term. The procedure was performed on a friend’s yacht, at sea, and involved the removal of a significant portion of his upper palate. The surgery, while successful, resulted in a speech impediment that required correction via a prosthetic device inserted in his mouth. Cleveland finished his second term while keeping the entire event secret from the public.
The Edmund Morris trilogy on TR is fantastic. I'm going to reread the whole thing. So many amazing things. What a life! Beautifully told.
Which Abraham Lincoln book do you recommend? I know Chris loved "Team of Rivals."
But the lesser presidents are fun to read about. I'm rereading "Destiny of the Republic" along with watching the Netflix series based on it ("Death By Lighting") and it's constantly interesting. The author, Candice Millard, also wrote a book about TR called "The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey" (about something utterly crazy he did after he was President).
Another presidential assassination book is "The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century." Netflix should make a series out of that one too. The story is so interesting. Lots about the anarchists.
"Cleveland comes off more as a 19th century libertarian than a Leftwing Democrat. Vetoing spending bills."
One of his most famous acts was to veto farm aid to Texans after a drought. He wrote:
"I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people."
Those were the days.
Actually, Chris tells me that the book he read about Chester Arthur was Gentleman Boss, not the one that was mentioned above. Here’s a commission earned link to Amazon to read about that book https://amzn.to/47MY6Mp
And just like that, Grover Cleveland is now my favorite President.
Creepy guy with a dark side. I don't know all the details, but he had an illegitimate child and treated the mother shabbily. He became a sort of godfather or surrogate father to the daughter of his law partner and friend and then married her when she came of age. Maybe that wasn't considered wrong then, but he was a guy ladies might not have wanted to be alone with.
I had not heard of the Netflix series “Death by Lightning” until two days ago when I read an interesting piece by Vermont historian Mark Bushnell. Apparently, the series is about two "lesser" presidents: James Garfield (Ohio) and Chester Arthur (Vermont). Mark Bushnell's column has interesting tidbits of history that I didn't know before about both men: https://vtdigger.org/2025/11/16/then-again-vermonts-chester-arthur-is-an-unlikely-star-in-a-new-netflix-series/
Iron Grover Cleveland. He was a well off young lawyer in Buffalo during the civil war and hired a guy from Poland to be his substitute in the army draft. Later Democrats bragged that “He hired a Pole to take his place — and then he became the first Democrat to take Lincoln’s place.” Democrats never change.
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