BARACK OBAMA: JHIMMI CARTER/GROVER CLEVELAND REDUX?
Grover Cleveland’s Presidential Lessons
“In both instances, the general public was already dissatisfied. When core supporters then wavered, there was nothing left to sustain their presidencies”
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=516031
By J.T. YOUNG
A Democratic president is threatened by an economic collapse.
His responses seem to have had little effect on the economy but have had the effect of disenchanting the more liberal wing of his party. Sound familiar? It did over a century ago too.
The president then was Grover Cleveland. The strong parallels with Obama’s presidency make this more than an interesting history lesson, but a political one as well.
Obama and Cleveland’s presidencies offer several notable firsts. Obama’s first is well known.
But Cleveland was the first Democratic president elected after America’s greatest war and was the first (and only) president to serve two nonconsecutive terms.
Each also faced a severe economic crisis. Obama entered office last year in a downturn that has turned into America’s severest economic test in generations.
Cleveland’s crisis started in 1893, right after he began his second term.
To many voters, particularly in their own party, both crises demanded government intervention. Each president responded, but did so with very different intentions.
Cleveland’s crisis was marked by falling farm prices. To what was then still an agrarian America, falling farm prices were akin to what falling home and investment values are to today’s largely suburban America. Cleveland’s crisis, now known as the Panic of 1893, was marked by bankruptcies and a stock market crash.
Cleveland responded by calling a special session of Congress. His major objective — in an era when presidents still did not often have major legislative objectives — was to repeal the Sherman Silver Act of 1890 in order to protect the dollar’s gold standard.
That legislation, which required silver purchases in an attempt to inflate the currency, was seen by its supporters as crucial to raising farm prices. Cleveland’s goal of repeal split his party into “easy money” and “sound money” camps.
The economic crisis continued into 1894. That year’s midterm elections devastated the Democrats. They lost control of Congress, losing 116 House seats and five Senate seats (out of a total of 88 at the time).
Still, Cleveland fought to maintain the gold standard as the flight of gold abroad threatened to collapse the dollar. He stuck to his guns, but his party stuck with silver.
At their 1896 convention, although the Democrats had an incumbent two-time winner eligible for re-election — and their only successful presidential candidate in over a quarter of a century — the party platform repudiated Cleveland’s policies.
The party then repudiated Cleveland personally, nominating the young Williams Jennings Bryan, who had electrified the delegates with his famous Cross of Gold speech.
Republicans went on to win the election with their largest majority in 24 years.
Flash-forward over a century.
Obama has seen the economy continue to deteriorate. There is no indication that the downturn will be any shorter than the one Cleveland encountered. Cleveland pursued what he thought was the best course.
There is no reason to presume that Obama is doing otherwise — either in economic or his high-profile health care initiative.
Cleveland and his party suffered a drop in popularity; polls indicate the same happening now.
What proved ultimately fatal to Cleveland was the alienation of his own party. Cleveland was not on the ticket to lose to the Republicans in November 1896. He had already been dispatched months earlier by the Democrats.
Obama too seems to be encountering disenchantment in his party’s liberal wing.
The big difference between Obama and his predecessor is that Cleveland intentionally brought his liberals’ ire upon himself — he knew the cost of his anti-silver policy and accepted it.
In contrast, Obama had no intention to alienate his left wing. In his case, it is an unintentional outgrowth of the political process he is encountering.
It is not clear if this distinction of intents is too subtle to sway today’s liberals. As another embattled Democratic president can attest, this is a dangerous business. Jimmy Carter found this out 30 years ago, when Sen. Edward Kennedy’s primary challenge left him easy pickings for Ronald Reagan.
It is possible to encapsulate the threat of disengaging your base by paraphrasing another president, this time a Republican: You can alienate some of the people all of the time, and you can alienate all of the people some of the time, but you shouldn’t alienate your base any of the time.
The focus for the better part of 2009 has been on the threat to Obama and his agenda from Republican ranks.
As Cleveland, and more recently Carter, remind us, the threat from one’s own ranks is as serious as it is close.
In both instances, the general public was already dissatisfied. When core supporters then wavered, there was nothing left to sustain their presidencies.
As 2010 begins, perhaps the focus on a threat to the Obama administration should look closer to home.
• Young served in the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004 and as a congressional staff member from 1987 to 2000.
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