Grover Cleveland Tell the truth EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Listen to Presidential at http://wapo.st/presidential This transcript was run through an automated transcription service and then lightly edited for clarity. There may be typos or small discrepancies from the podcast audio. MATTHEW ALGEO: He's not up there in a class with Donald Trump for distrust of the press, but Grover Cleveland really did not have friendly relations with a lot of the media. He rose so rapidly – he was elected mayor of Buffalo in 1881, governor of New York in 1882 and president of the United States in 1884. I mean, this guy in three years went from mayor of Buffalo to president. And he really wasn't equipped to deal with all the attention that came his way. In the first presidential race in 1884, which he won, it came out that he had fathered an illegitimate child. And some of the more salacious newspapers printed very prominent stories about this, and this really turned Grover off onto the media in general. He had a basic distrust of reporters after that. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: That's reporter and biographer Matthew Algeo. He's the author of 'The President is a Sick Man.' And this episode is about truth and lies -- and when a president can use either of those two to his advantage. It's also an episode about a secret cancer surgery at sea. I'm Lillian Cunningham with The Washington Post. And this is the halfway point. We've reached the 22nd episode of “Presidential.” PRESIDENTIAL THEME MUSIC LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Grover Cleveland -- or Stephen Grover Cleveland, as he was actually named -- is our 22nd and our 24th president, which messes up the numbering system a lot. And he's the only one to do so -- the only president who has served two non-consecutive terms in the White House. He is also the last American president for whom there is no voice recording. So, we're going to have a little fun with that and celebrate the end of a presidential era with a special guest -- Grover Cleveland. Or more specifically, Roman Mars playing Grover Cleveland. Roman Mars is the host of the awesome podcast “99 Percent Invisible.” And you'll hear him a few times throughout the episode reading letters, giving speeches. Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 1 So who is this guy? Cleveland was born in 1837 in Caldswell, New Jersey. He was a Democrat, and he was president from 1885 to 1889. Then, Benjamin Harrison comes in for four years, and then Cleveland returns and he's president again from 1893 to 1897. What else? Well, for that, let's turn back to my conversation with Matthew Algeo. Could you paint a picture for me of this man Stephen Grover Cleveland? Pretend I'm about to go on like a blind date with him and you know the guy, and I don't know him at all. How would you describe the person who I'm about to meet -- physically how would you describe him and also just his personality type? MATTHEW ALGEO: Well, physically he was a very big guy. He was our second biggest president, after Taft. He tapped out at about 300 pounds when he was president. But he was also a very graceful guy. People talked about how nimbly he moved and how well he could dance. He really was this weird contradiction. His father was a Presbyterian minister and he was very taciturn. In official functions, he could come across as not very much fun. But on the other hand, when he was a young man in Buffalo, he loved to frequent the beer halls there and was quite a lot of fun. So, I guess if you were meeting Grover on a blind date, I would need to know: Are you meeting him at a political function or a social function? LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So you'd see two very different people. MATTHEW ALGEO: Yeah it's really interesting, and I think you see this a lot in political figures. He had a hard time sort of letting the mask down when he was a politician. But in his general day-to- day life with friends, he was almost a comic. He would crack joke. He was a great impressionist. He could impersonate all the great political figures of his time, and so, he would constantly entertain his friends. But when he was hanging out in a political context, he was very remote. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: We're going to come back to Matthew a bit later, but I want to turn now to Michelle Krowl at the Library of Congress to dive into some of the other character traits of Cleveland's that launched him toward the presidency. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So, I mean, he has this reputation from a pretty young age, early in his career, about being the incorruptible, upstanding, ethical guy, right? Hardworking as well. Holding people accountable. MICHELLE KROWL: Oh, absolutely. That's much of a touchstone for him throughout his personal and political career -- that he's incredibly hardworking, kind of a nose-to-the-grindstone sort of person. He sees, particularly for public office, that it's almost like a trust between the people and himself -- that he's been hired to do a job, and it is his responsibility to do that job to the best of his ability, to serve the people to whatever extent he can. An interesting example -- and this gets used against him later – is when he's the sheriff of Erie County in New York. He gets that office in 1870 and one of the responsibilities is to oversee punishments for criminals, and in some instances, when those criminals were executed by hanging, he was actually the one who did the hanging. He actually pulled the lever when a hangmen wasn't available. Not because he wanted to do the job, but because he felt it was part of his responsibility and he wasn't going to push it off on someone else. Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 2 So of course, later on, when he's running for other political offices and president, then he becomes ‘the hangman of Buffalo.’ So that ends up being used against him. But he's also been known to be incorruptible, to be very honest, in that sense. And that's one of the the things that propels him in his career -- because the people know that he's going to do what he thinks is right. He's going to look after their interests, particularly financial. Cleveland tends to be a fiscal conservative, and if it's an expense that he feels is unnecessary or has been padded to some degree, he will veto it. So, he's known as ‘the veto governor.’ You know, he hadn't been in politics long. So, he didn't owe a lot of favors. He wasn't taking bribes, he wasn't part of the political corruption. So, people saw him as part of the reform element of the political process, and that's what propels him into the series of jobs as mayor of Buffalo and then governor of New York and then finally into the presidency. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: I mean, these character traits must seem particularly admirable at the time, given the backdrop of political patronage and some of that corruption and money that we've seen in enmeshed in the political system up until this point. MICHELLE KROWL: Absolutely. And that's one of the traits that voters are looking at and people in the party are looking at when they're putting him forward as a candidate. He doesn't come with the baggage of corruption, at least when you are looking at a political time where other people have been thought to be doing that or that's part of the whole political game. He does seem to be an almost a breath of fresh air. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Do we see in his early story where he gets these traits from -- the hard work and also the sort of ethical righteousness? MICHELLE KROWL: Some of the lack of of expenditures -- or maybe on the other hand you could call it a little bit of frugality on his part -- may come from the fact that when he was younger, his father was a minister. And Cleveland was just about to the point that he was thinking about trying to go off to college and then his father passed away, and now he was partly responsible for his mother and his siblings. So, he never did go to college. But he studied law. For a brief period of time, he was a teacher with his brother in an institute for the blind. But it was really law where he found his calling. So, he was helping his siblings and not living beyond his means. Now, whether that was something that developed as a result of the circumstances in his family or whether that was just something innate in him that he was just by nature a frugal person -- that I don't now. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Because of this straight-shooting record, Cleveland gets the Democratic nomination in 1884 while he's serving as governor of New York. MICHELLE KROWL: Cleveland didn't really have a burning ambition to be president. He kind of thought of it as something that providence would decree. ‘If I can do good for the party, if I can do good for my nation, then I will do my duty.’ LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Right, this sort of sense of, ‘Well, if people want me to fill this role, I'll step Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 3 into it.’ MICHELLE KROWL: I mean, he must have had enough ambition to want to do the job, but it's not the burning passion of his life.