The Backstory: Why did these two presidents have 2 nonconsecutive terms?

Donald Trump and Grover Cleveland are the only two presidents to get elected to two nonconsecutive terms. Their personalities and lifestyles explain a lot; neither liked having their opinions questioned, neither cared what others thought of them, and both had beautiful, much younger wives. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, Monday is inauguration Day. Donald Trump, of course, got
elected to a second term, separated from the first by
President Biden's four years in office. But you know what,
He's not the first president to win two non consecutive terms.
There was just one other, Grover Cleveland, and he was
another my way or the highway kind of guy. What
makes you vote somebody in and then vote him out

(00:21):
and then decide you want to vote him back. Well,
there were some similarities between these two. Both didn't really
care what people thought of them, and both had beautiful
younger wives. I'm Patty Steele. Second guessing your vote and
then second guessing your second guessing. That's next on the backstory.

(00:43):
The backstory is back. Presidential inauguration Day in America has
been on January twentieth since nineteen thirty seven, unless it
fell on a Sunday, then it was moved to Monday,
the twenty first. This year, the inauguration happens this Monday
the twentieth. That's when Donald Trump gets his second term
in the Oval office. But what makes it unusual is

(01:04):
the four year separation between terms. Only one other president
had two non consecutive terms. The first was Grover Cleveland,
who was elected in eighteen eighty four, given the boot
in eighteen eighty eight, and then re elected in eighteen
ninety two. So what do these two men have in common?
A little more than you would think. As for their

(01:26):
personal lives, both had Gorgeo's younger wives. Cleveland was the
first president to get married while in office. He was
forty nine years old, and his new bride, Francis or
Frankie as she was called, was just twenty one, twenty
eight years younger than him. She was the daughter of
Grover's law partner. In fact, Grover had actually given the

(01:47):
family Frankie's baby carriage when she was born. Grover watched
over her after her father died when she was eleven,
and while president he kept an eye on her education
and financial well being, and eventual romance blossomed. Like Trump,
Grover also had some nasty press written about his sex life.

(02:07):
His scandal involved a child born to Maria Halpin, a
woman he had dated ten years before his first White
House run. She claimed he'd raped her. He denied it
and later accused Maria of being an alcoholic, and had
the little boy taken to an orphanage, which he paid for,
but he also had Maria sent to an insane asylum.

(02:28):
She was released after just five days because she simply
wasn't insane. Cleveland got away with all of this because
he owned up to the story and was taking care
of little Oscar financially as well as supporting a new
business venture for Maria, and it was a different time.
When asked if he was the father of Oscar Cleveland
by the press, he said it's possible, but the baby

(02:51):
daddy also could have been his law partner, Oscar Folsom,
his future wife's dead father. Confusing, right, talk about a
soap opera. Anyway, Grover won the election by an incredibly
narrow margin despite the scandal, much like the stories that
have followed President Trump through both elections. So why did
Grover Cleveland get voted out after his first term. Well,

(03:14):
it seems he made some unpopular decisions. He fought against
any financial favors to folks like aging Civil War vets
and farmers struggling due to drought. Plus, he reclaimed eighty
one million acres of land granted to various railroads, and
he also tried to regulate the railroads. Politicians needed to

(03:34):
be friends with the railroad industry in those days, and
he wasn't His own Democratic Party said he was giving
the eighteen eighty eight election away to the Republicans, But
he said, what's the use of being elected or reelected
unless you stand for something that does make sense. He
didn't care if he made friends in Washington. He lost
the election of eighteen eighty eight to the GOP. Then

(03:57):
he decided to come back and try to finish his job,
and the election of eighteen ninety two. People had been
somewhat unhappy with the Republican president and welcomed Cleveland back
with a popular and electoral win. But it didn't last.
He ran into some bad luck. First off, he didn't
have a lot of friends left in DC to support him.

(04:18):
Plus the country had slipped into a financial depression he
wasn't able to handle quickly enough. He could have run
for a third term in eighteen ninety six, since there
wasn't the term limits we have today, But even he
wasn't enjoying the job, and so for two years leading
up to the eighteen ninety six election, he was basically

(04:38):
friendless in Washington. No senators would talk to him. It
seemed like he was a complete outsider with his own party,
saying he would never step foot in the White House again.
He seemed to inspire hatred, said one senior senator. I
hate the very ground that man walks on, and a
Democrat running for the Senator in South Carolina that when

(05:00):
he won, he would quote stick a pitchfork in that
fat bag of beef in the White House. Wow, said another.
I detest him so much. I don't even think his
wife is beautiful. That was a huge statement, by the way,
considering her beauty, intelligence, and her status as a fan
favorite with the public when it came to political wives.

(05:22):
What's interesting is Grover Cleveland had a lot of baggage
between unpopular political decisions and kind of a sketchy sex life,
but in that time and place, he pretty much got
away with it, and that actually turns out to be
true for a whole lot of US presidents. At the
end of the day, folks in the Oval office can
sink or swim with all kinds of baggage, but with

(05:43):
the right personality they can be Teflon. Hope you're enjoying
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(06:08):
I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer
is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
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(06:31):
Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the
pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.