I already explained Brion McClanahan’s ranking system and critiqued his reasoning on the nine presidents who he says, “screwed up America” and the first two of the “four that tried to save her”. In this part, I will continue my analysis of his book with the remaining two of the “four that tried to save her”.
Grover Cleveland
McClanahan quotes Woodrow Wilson, who stated: “You may think Cleveland’s administration was Democratic. It was not. Cleveland was a conservative Republican.” McClanahan agrees with Wilson; I do not. Cleveland was, in many ways, the first progressive president.
McClanahan on the Gilded Age: “Americans had become weary of corruption and scandals in government. They had a right to be. Two previous presidents had been assassinated, several leading members of Congress and one vice president had been indicated in corruption, the fusion of finance and government was creating a climate destructive to middle class Americans, and Congress was spending money like drunken sailors on shore leave“.
How much of this assessment is true? Let’s take a look:
“Americans had become weary of corruption and scandals in government.” It is true that there was corruption in government, but it was by and large gone by the time Cleveland had run for president. Much of it was cleaned up under Grant and what little remained was subsequently cleaned up under Hayes and Arthur. Furthermore, Arthur’s passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Act put an end to the spoils system which is what created the rampant corruption to begin with. Cleveland did bring back remnants of the spoils system, but it never reached the level it had been before Arthur was president.
“Two previous presidents had been assassinated” This is true, but there wasn’t any reason for this to shake confidence in the government. One was assassinated by a group of Southern Sympathizers, the other by a mad man.
“Several leading members of Congress and one vice president had been indicated in corruption” This is true, but this was part of the Credit Mobilier scandal, which transpired under Andrew Johnson. The Vice President, Schuyler Colfax, was the Speaker of the House at the time.
“The fusion of finance and government was creating a climate destructive to middle class Americans” This one is false. The American middleclass grew throughout the Gilded Age, that was until the Panic of 1893, which Cleveland mishandled.
“Congress was spending money like drunken sailors on shore leave” Every president that served between, but not including, Lincoln and McKinley ran a net surplus during their term except for one: Grover Cleveland.
Why would McClanahan mischaracterize what was going on in the country before Cleveland was elected? My only guess would be to make Cleveland out to be a savior. McClanahan even cites Joseph Pulitzer’s four reasons for endorsing Cleveland in the 1884 election: “1. He is an honest man 2. He is an honest man 3. He is an honest man 4. He is an honest man“. But is this true? was Cleveland more honest than the average politician at the time? Not really. You could easily argue that Cleveland’s character and integrity was below most of the other 19th century presidents, especially in light of the Halpin affair. Before becoming president, Cleveland had an affair with Maria Halpin in which he fathered an illegitimate child. Halpin signed an affidavit stating that the affair wasn’t consensual, that Cleveland was forceful, and he threatened her if she went to the authorities. After the child was born Cleveland had Halpin thrown into an insane asylum, even though she was judged to not be insane, and the child was shipped off to an orphanage. Cleveland further spun a tall tale that made Halpin out to be a harlot and him to be a hero that “courageously” took responsibility for the child’s paternity because he was the only bachelor among Halpin’s many lovers. Even though most historians have swallowed Cleveland’s story whole, Charles Lachman disproves Cleveland’s tale in his 2013 book: “A Secret Life: The Sex, Lies and Scandal of President Grover Cleveland”. McClanahan’s witness to Cleveland’s honesty is Joseph Pulitzer, the creator of yellow journalism.
On Cleveland’s vetoes: “Cleveland issued more vetoes than all the men who had previously held the office combined. Why? Because Congress kept passing unconstitutional legislation…Most of his vetoes were issued against pension bills, a form of government welfare Cleveland despised.”
Pensions for disabled veterans are not a form of “welfare“, and it is rather insulting to say that they are. There is nothing unconstitutional about Congress paying out pensions either. The federal government had given out veteran’s pensions dating back to the revolutionary war starting in 1776 Not only was there a precedent, but they also existed before the Constitution. Cleveland didn’t veto these bills because he found them to be unconstitutional, he did so because he disliked them. Why did Cleveland dislike them? It wasn’t any type of noble defense of the Constitution or the treasury, it was because he felt that former confederate soldiers should receive the same pensions that Union veterans received, which is quite preposterous.
McClanahan on the Tenure of Office Act: “Cleveland correctly understood that only constitutional laws had to be enforced. The Tenure of Office Act did not pass the test“.
The act was certainly unconstitutional when it was originally passed, but the law was revised in 1869 to take the most erroneous parts out. The revisions allowed the president to suspend office holders at his discretion while designating replacements, who were subject to confirmation in the senate. The president no longer had to give reason why he suspended an office holder, and the Senate could no longer force the reinstatement of suspended officials. Even with the revisions, it could be argued that it was a dubious law, but not an unconstitutional one.
McClanahan on tariffs: “The Democratic party had traditionally held protective tariffs to be unconstitutional…”
The Constitution gives Congress the “Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States”. The tariffs were uniform, as they charged the same duties regardless of where the goods were being imported, thus they were constitutional.
McClanahan on the Wilson-Gorman Tariff: When the “bill finally made it to the White House as the ‘Wilson-Gorman Tariff Bill’, Cleveland refused to sign it. Signing it would have signaled that Cleveland agreed with the content. He did not veto it either. His veto would not have been overridden…This was probably the best course of action constitutionally”
The Wilson-Gorman Tariff had an income tax in it, which was unconstitutional at the time. By allowing it to become law, Cleveland was going against his constitutional duty to veto any and all unconstitutional laws. Several times throughout the book McClanahan states that a president has a constitutional obligation to veto all unconstitutional laws, but he makes an exception for Cleveland. Cleveland vetoed more bills than any other president except Franklin Roosevelt, so Cleveland certainly wasn’t shy about vetoing bills that he disagreed with. McClanahan even states that it was Cleveland’s policy to “let all constitutional legislation pass and veto the rest. He would do that 584 times“. As I demonstrated, Cleveland vetoed quite a few perfectly constitutional bills while allowing unconstitutional bills to pass.
On the Panic of 1893 McClanahan gets so many easily verifiable facts wrong that I feel compelled to verify or correct them:
McClanahan: “During the interregnum between Cleveland’s two terms, Congress had passed several pieces of legislation that created both a credit and an inflationary crisis in the United States, namely the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 and the McKinley tariff of 1890.“
Actually, inflation was a net zero percent from 1889, when Cleveland first left office, until 1893, when Cleveland retook office. What a dollar would buy in 1889, it would buy in 1893.
McClanahan: “The Sherman Silver Purchase Act mandated that the government purchase every scrap of silver in the United States.“
Once again, McClanahan is wrong. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act mandated that the U.S. government coin 4.5 million ounces of silver a month, which replaced the Bland-Allison Act, which required $2 million to $4 million a month. Since the average cost of silver was 92 cents an ounce during the life of the act, it equated to the coinage of $4.0 – $4.2 million a month. One point that McClanahan leaves out is that the money supply needs to grow with the economy to avoid deflation, which is a far worse issue, and the act staved off deflation with the extra coinage of silver.
McClanahan: “The government further contributed to the problem by pumping millions into railroads and other ‘public works’ projects.“
In this, McClanahan is mostly correct. It was railroad subsidies that sank the economy, but it was the manner in which they were subsidized, not the mere existence of “public works projects” that caused the panic. The government would subsidize railroads by paying them by the mile of track they laid, which led railroads to build too many new lines in order to get the government subsidies. Inevitably the excess building would need to be liquidated, which would cause railroad failures. Banks had huge financial interests in the railroads, and railroad failures and their inability to make loan payments led to bank failures which rippled through the economy causing a depression.
McClanahan: “The McKinley Tariff of 1890 placed rates at their highest level in history. American Industry, protected by the tariff and awash in easy money, produced expensive goods that would not sell“.
Actually, American goods sold well until the passage of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff under Cleveland. The Wilson-Gorman Tariff was supposed to open up new markets for American goods, but it backfired as cheaper imported goods squeezed out domestic made products in the United States, whereas American manufacturers found few new overseas markets for their goods. The net affect was lower profits for American manufacturers and eroding job security for American workers.
McClanahan: “Cleveland worried that the mass exodus of gold from the American treasury was making the problem worse by driving up inflation (he was right), so he tried to stimulate investment by agreeing to allow the Treasury Department to issue a series of bonds…The ratio was way out of proportion in 1893, with gold having almost disappeared from the United States Treasury. When the bond program did not work, Cleveland had to cajole Congress to act. He called a special session of Congress in August of 1893 with the purpose of repealing the Sherman Silver Purchase Act.“
Actually, the mass exodus of gold from the treasury didn’t happen until after Cleveland had the Sherman Silver Purchase Act repealed in 1893. The repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act caused the bottom to fall out of the silver market leading to holders of government bonds and silver certificates to cash them in for gold. In March of 1893 the U.S. government held a reserve of $107 million in gold, the same amount was still held in February of 1894. The gold reserve dropped to $45 million by January of 1895. On February 20th of 1895 Cleveland made a deal with J.P. Morgan, in which a syndicate, led by Morgan would buy $60 million in U.S. bonds with gold to replenish the gold reserve. Morgan and his partners made a killing and Cleveland’s image was tarnished for being in the pocket of the money trust. The Morgan deal was only a short-term bandage to the problem, as the gold reserve was down to $50 million in January of 1896. McClanahan reverses the order of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act repeal and the issuing of the bonds. Why? Because when you get the order correct, it shows that it was the repeal of the act that caused the gold shortage.
McClanahan: “When the Panic of 1893 evaporated by 1895, Cleveland could with great pride point to his anti-inflationary policies and refusal to bow to political pressure and pump more government dollars into the economy as the strategies that turned things around.”
The Panic of 1893 didn’t end until after McKinley became president and he readjusted the tariffs with the Dingley Tariff of 1897, and he passed the Gold Standard Act.
McClanahan on foreign policy: “Cleveland would also use the navy to enforce the Monroe Doctrine in Latin America” and McClanahan further praises Cleveland’s first inaugural address that stated: “It is the policy of Monroe and of Washington and Jefferson…”
In truth, Cleveland’s administration marked a major turning point in U.S. foreign policy. Cleveland’s term was but a precursor to the progressive age foreign policies of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Cleveland intervened several times in Latin America in instances of little importance to the United States that never threatened the Monroe Doctrine. Twice he intervened in rebellions in Panama (1885) and Brazil (1894). He courted war with Britain over a border dispute with Venezuela (1895) Germany over Samoa (1888) and France over reparations with Santo Domingo (1894). One could argue that the Roosevelt Corollary was just a verbalization of Cleveland’s foreign policy.
McClanahan on the Navy: “Cleveland was an advocate of the American navy and urged Congress to modernize and expand its fleet of battleships. Teddy Roosevelt would eventually get credit for what became known as the ‘Great White Fleet’, but construction on these modern warships began during Cleveland’s tenure in office.”
The only part of that statement that is true is that Roosevelt unduly gets credit for building the navy. Chester Arthur was able to get approval from Congress for three steel cruisers, an armed dispatch ship and the rebuilding of three monitors. Because of these actions, Arthur is known as the “Father of the Steel Navy”. When Democrats regained control of Congress in 1883, they refused to appropriate funds for any more new ships. The Navy would have to wait for Benjamin Harrison to become president to continue its rebuilding program. In fact, the Navy didn’t have any battleships and only had a few armored cruisers. It is true that some of the building continued during Cleveland’s second term, but those ships were already authorized under Harrison.
At the end of the chapter on Grover Cleveland, McClanahan glosses over two big actions that happened during Cleveland’s term: “If Cleveland could be faulted for anything in office it was his signing of the Interstate Commerce Act (legislation he deemed unconstitutional but necessary) and his advocacy for an income tax.”
McClanahan isn’t so kind to other presidents that he says signed unconstitutional legislation. He doesn’t even forgive Lyndon Johnson for signing what he sees as unconstitutional civil rights laws. When speaking about the Federal Trade Commission McClanahan states: “The FTC became one of the most powerful regulatory agencies in Washington DC, with the ability to act as all three branches of government. Like other regulatory agencies, the FTC could craft rules, enforce the rules, and decide who broke the rules with virtually no oversight by the American people”. The Interstate Commerce Commission was the forerunner of the FTC and the first such regulatory agency. Cleveland was the innovator, so why does McClanahan hold Wilson to the fire while letting Cleveland off of the hook? Because he personally likes Cleveland and falls for Cleveland’s rhetoric. Cleveland was every bit as obligated to veto unconstitutional laws as any other president.
Calvin Coolidge
McClanahan: “Coolidge was not going to use the executive branch to unravel decades of unconstitutional legislation. The president cannot do so constitutionally.“
This is a rather odd statement, because McClanahan has stated that “Nixon had a constitutional obligation to defend the Constitution by refusing to enforce the unconstitutional decision.” when speaking of the Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education decision, If Nixon had a “constitutional obligation“, why didn’t Coolidge? I disagree with McClanahan’s assertion that Nixon was obligated to ignore the Supreme Court, but McClanahan is being inconsistent in holding Nixon and Coolidge to two different standards.
McClanahan continues: “Coolidge had to work within the governmental structure he was handed in 1923. To expect a president to roll back mountains of illegal acts of Congress would be to expect the executive branch to become an elected monarchy.“
McClanahan believes that Nixon should have rolled back the New Deal and Great Society: “His (Nixon’s) first budget proposal to Congress immediately balanced the budget through spending cuts. Nixon did not care for the top-down approach to federal spending that (Franklin) Roosevelt and (Lyndon) Johnson had made infamous during their administrations. Instead, Nixon proposed directly involving the states in the spending process through block grants – in what he called the ‘New Federalism’. To Nixon, the problem was not the money or the unconstitutional federal programs, but the process.”
Once again, McClanahan is contradicting himself in his treatment of Coolidge and Nixon. If one couldn’t expect Coolidge to roll back decades of legislation, why would one have that expectation of Nixon?
McClanahan on the Great Mississippi flood of 1927: “The one blemish on Coolidge’s record, from a constitutional standpoint, occurred in 1927. The Mississippi River flooded that year to levels not seen in American history…He brokered a deal with congressional leaders on a compromise bill that provided $500 million in federal aid to the region and involved the Army Corps of Engineers in future flood prevention and abatement assistance…These bills were the first in a long line of federal assistance for disaster relief…They were also unconstitutional.“
The problem is that McClanahan terms disaster relief as “welfare” in much the same way he terms veteran’s pensions as “welfare”. He is incorrect in this assessment. Few people would argue that emergency relief is “welfare” which would constitute an ongoing benefit, or unconstitutional.
McClanahan on Foreign Policy: “Coolidge sought to save the United States and the American public from the progressive foreign adventurism of his predecessor, Woodrow Wilson“.
While Wilson was the most interventionist president, the rise in intervention and gunboat diplomacy started under Grover Cleveland, a president whose foreign policy McClanahan praises.
Overall, the book is really well written, though McClanahan is not consistent in his application of what he sees as constitutional and unconstitutional. Grover Cleveland was a precursor to all the bad policies and legislation of the progressive era that McClanahan takes Wilson and Roosevelt to task for, yet McClanahan praises Cleveland. I tend to agree with some of his assessments of certain presidents, but he does get a few quite wrong. Lincoln and Truman certainly don’t belong at the bottom of the rankings, and Cleveland certainly doesn’t belong at the top. Nixon and Jefferson should be moved closer to the center, as they had both good and bad policies.
All the articles in the series:
Brion McClanahan’s 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America Part I
Brion McClanahan’s 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America Part II
Brion McClanahan’s 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America Part III
Brion McClanahan’s 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America Part IV
Brion McClanahan’s 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America Part V
Brion McClanahan’s 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America Part VI
Presidential Rankings 
People like Brion McClanahan or Ivan Eland look only at Grover Cleveland’s vetoes, from which he emerges in their minds as the great libertarian President. They also like low tariffs, which Cleveland continues to score in their eyes. Cleveland’s other policies were all justified in some way by them.
I recognized another standard of Libertarians, who praised Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge for their limited government policies, but both were protectionists. That’s why they criticized Harding and Coolidge for unreasonable reasons.
I think they like Cleveland’s rhetoric too. He said a lot of conservative things, but he really didn’t follow through.
As far as Harding and Coolidge go, they did raise tariffs, but that was more than offset by lowering income taxes, and income taxes are worse than tariffs (in my mind anyways). McClanahan doesn’t really like Harding though. He calls him a “showman more comfortable chasing skirts than defending his oath.” This is a gross mis-underestimation of Harding, Harding was every bit as constitutional as Coolidge was, if not even more so.
I used to be a leftist, I was influenced by academic rankings, so I didn’t know much about Tyler and Cleveland because they weren’t as impressive as FDR, LBJ, Teddy, or Wilson. I also hated Coolidge and Harding for thinking they were responsible for the Great Depression. Now that’s different, I’d rank Nixon and Jefferson in the upper-middle range. Tyler is at a very good level. Jackson, Cleveland, Teddy, Wilson, FRD, LBJ, Carter, and Obama are among the worst. Coolidge, Harding and Lincoln, and Truman are in the top seven along with Washington, Eisenhower, and Reagan.
With me FDR’s rankings get a big boost for his handling of WWII. If you have looked at my rankings, I mostly agree with you though.
I’m guessing that it’s also a case of “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” On a surface level, Cleveland actually looks pretty cool, given that he ostensibly butted heads with Congress, kept America “out of war,” and refused to spend frivolously. But if you examine his actions with any degree of scrutiny, this illusion quickly shatters and you begin to realize he was a pretty terrible person and president.
Theodore Roosevelt is another case, where he didn’t technically get America involved in any wars, but his foreign policy was still awful. Considering the historical context, he and Cleveland were far more aggressive than their contemporaries. Yet, considering historical context is something that some people can’t do, so they just look at the “hey, he started no wars!” and feel he’s better than someone like James Madison, even though the War of 1812 was entirely justified.
I’m not sure how anyone can honestly claim Cleveland was a paragon of libertarianism, given his track record on civil rights. I’d say Warren Harding was a far better exemplar of a “libertarian” president, and that’s part of why he’s in my top 5 presidents.
Cleveland looks libertarian if you only look at his vetoes and his rhetoric. If you look at what he passed and his foreign policy, you can rightly claim that he was the first progressive president. The ICC, the first peacetime income tax, he created the Department of Labor, elevated the Department of Agriculture to a cabinet level position and he intervened in the Pullman strike. All of these things are far closer to Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt than any conservative or libertarian president. Some people also mistake allowing states to abuse their citizens with libertarianism, it is not. Cleveland vetoed the pension bills because he felt former confederate soldiers should get federal pensions if union soldiers did, so he deemed them to be “unfair”.
I agree, of the 20th century presidents, Harding and Coolidge are the two most libertarian. The only “negative” from a libertarian point of view would be protectionism, but tariff increases were more than offset by income tax cuts.
Teddy Roosevelt helped set up future wars by deciding the Russo-Japanese War in such a manner as to help create Imperial Japan by awarding Japan Korea. (This still has negative consequences to this day) TR certainly would have rushed into WWI if he were president in 1914.