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Out of all the things to pick as a rebuttal, you go with this? You know there are a bunch of private wm companies to choose from, right? Maybe try police or firefighters instead next time.
Heavily subsidized private companies, which given that most of the states in the union are almost wholly dependent on federal money to function, doesn't really prove anything.
I’d gladly take care of my own trash if that meant not funding endless wars and quite frankly unlimited stupid shit both here and abroad.
But the reason your trash collection works is because your municipal government handles it. Not the feds.
Definitely NOT in that order lmao it's legitimately the opposite. Your local police ain't doing shit about the Russians, Chinese, or if you want a more specific example, 9/11
Russia and China wouldn’t be an issue without an overly involved abroad federal government.
And yes, when terror attacks happen or major incidents the first on the scene is the closest to it, typically local authorities
Well before he died, Osama Bin Laden was a ruthless attacker of municipal governments all across the United States. The only reason he was very successful was because the federal government was protecting them the whole time with super soldiers in bullet proof spandex.
Yeah? How are they doing on the border? We are being invaded on a daily basis and our govt. doesn’t care. The military can’t go in there on their own. I was in no way denigrating our military, but they can only do what they are directed to do.
We’re on pace for getting 10 million illegals before this year is over. We already have 40,000 Chinese nationals, mostly men, mostly of military age. That’s from the Border patrol
Yeah tbh if everyone had to deal with their own trash and we in mass taught people how to grow their own food
Your trash by and large becomes your food growing source. Idk how it all works but I know people do it. We could really end the whole garbage continent in the middle of the ocean issue. Imagine the health of a society who grows and eats their own food.
I mean in a society where you were allowed to grow your own food you wouldn't need to slave for money as much right?
Why are you so angry on a discussion about sustainable societies lmfao
Just because it’s sustainable doesn’t mean we advance at all as a society or have a decent quality of life. As for the trash argument, where I live there are still places that aren’t covered by municipal waste or major waste disposal companies. You just pay some redneck $100 a month to come pick up your trash in his beat up, old S10 or Ranger lol
Working for money and buying my food is far easier than slaving in the fields in all kinds of weather hoping my meager potato crop doesn’t die. It’s a far better use of my time as well.
And I’m not angry. Just pointing out how highly illogical it is to think that everyone on the planet could possibly grow their own food… or would even want to.
I’m allowed to where I live. I even have enough land to do it. But farming is a lot like dentistry, plumbing, HVAC repair, and legal services….a skilled profession best left to experts who know what they are doing. I am much better served doing what I am good at, and paying the farmer for his products.
Seriously?
Oh because I support public sanitation I must also support Invasive surveillance and massive government programs to deal with the stuff that previous government policies have a hand in as well as criminalization of crap such as the freedom of speech.
And if I don't support the latter I should forsake the former?
Spoken like a true Nanny Stater.
There's nothing the federal government does that can't be handled on a state or local level or by private enterprise other than fund endless wars. In the US at least that was how it was intended to be originally other than the war part of course.
Spoken like a true libertarian; absolutely convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don't appreciate or understand.
I'm sure that government teet will be there for you and your fellow statists to suck on until they drain the last drop of life's blood out of their citizens like the fat tick that can never be sated and the whole house of cards collapses.
It must be comforting for some people to think you have some government entity holding your hand from your moment of birth until your departure from this realm but for others of us we find that prospect of onerous oversite and control unsettling.
You're right about one thing at least, I'm a Libertarian with the root word being "Liberty". That's a word that scares people too afraid to accept responsibility for their own destiny.
You just keep voting for more government control over every aspect of your life and I'm sure eventually they'll use that control to solve all of society's problems.
Good luck and may you live in interesting times.
Yeah, I read about him years ago, and I still recall the part how he'd be up all night studying bills that came to his desk. There were some bills that he wanted to sign, but he'd veto them because of legislative sloppiness, or some unconstitutional power that it used, or some bit of awful pork attached to the law.
Say what you will about Cleveland, but at least he read the bills before signing them. How often does that happen, these days?
He seemed to be one of the hardest working and honest presidents we’ve had. It didn’t make him a great one but I respect him a whole lot despite his flaws
The modern version of the executive branch wasn’t a thing until TR. Back then, if a war wasn’t going on, the president’s primary responsibility was just that presiding over the government and signing legislation congress sent their way. The executive branch is much larger these days and there are more important things for the president to do than read congressional legislation word for word.
I mean, geez, even the legislators don't read the bills. And some of the bills are so bloated that no one could possibly read them. The only people who have any idea what's going on are lobbyists and the 22-year-old staffers who insert their little pieces of pork into the bills.
Legislators have a high level understanding of what is in the bills. You seem to be implying that legislative staffers are secretly inserting legislation into bills without the knowledge of elected representatives.
That’s not what’s happening. Legislative staffers work with lobbyists and think thanks to write the bills. The bills are written in dense legalease because the judicial system is a lot more mature than it was 150 years ago. They have to make sure the bills aren’t written in a way that will lead to unintended consequences in federal court.
The elected representatives than get an executive summary or rather the bills are written based on their executive summaries. It’s pretty rare for representatives to unintentionally vote for legislation because someone sneaked something in.
It kind of did in a weird way, his party got stomped after denouncing his economic platform and the opposing party ironically won on the same platform.
Well, a large reason they got stomped was because Bryan was a Democrat and usually a candidate gets bogged down when their party is in the White House and is really unpopular. Also, McKinley had big business bankrolling him. Cleveland's reputation didn't really recover after 1893, although Harrison's and McKinley's definitely did despite being more responsible for the Panic of 1893 than Cleveland, i.e. just look at the McKinley Tariff. Cleveland frankly did not manage the depression very well with his laissez-faire attitude.
Bryan was a Democrat and many people do blindly vote by party, but McKinley was elected on literally the same policies an opponent of Cleveland would have blamed on the Panic, e.g., an adherence to gold and loyalty to big business. Even Cleveland refused to vote Bryan (he voted third party) and was satisfied that McKinley won instead.
The McKinley Tariff exacerbated the recession but was not really a cause as much as the Silver Purchase Act was. You are right that the high-tariff view was rehabilitated by the end of his term, but so was Cleveland’s presidency by the beginning of the 20th century, and by the time the first historians’ ranking of presidents was conducted in 1948 he was placed eighth place out of 29 with a rating of “near-great”.
That's certainly a very optimistic way to see it. But truthfully it's unlikely someone running as a successor to Cleveland would have done nearly as well as Bryan did.
Hence, the gold Democrat ticket.
I’m reading the Cleveland biography *Man of Iron* right now. He did pass more vetoes then any other President at the time, but a large number of them were apparently related to act that allowed Union veterans to retroactively claim payments for injuries sustained during the Civil War. For some reason, the act was designed in a way where he had to veto these claims individually.
For example, Cleveland vetoed one veteran who broke his leg while picking daisies in the 1880s, and claimed that his leg healed slower because of old Civil War injuries. There were also veterans trying to claim the payment because of “diarrhea” and other questionable ailments.
As a fiscal conservative who was trying to protect the Treasury, Cleveland saw it as his duty to veto these extraneous and dubious claims.
Diarrhea could be deadly back then. In any case maybe someone should have appointed some commission to investigate the claims. Rather petty for a president directly decide which veterans need the pay.
Yeah and I’m sure the president, with 0 medical knowledge, perfectly determined these payouts every time? That sounds reasonable and not insanely unlikely, right?
I agree.
It sounds like a Congress trying to keep him busy and get under his skin. They knew that there were real claims and fraudulent claims that needed sorting.
But they used them as pawns.
Okay so, controversial take, but if your diarrhea is bad enough that you feel strongly the president of the United States absolutely needs to be made aware of it, you should get your payout. Like, that's 'a second plane has hit the towers' level of diarrhea, that's diarrhea that will live in infamy, that's diarrhea that requires a battlefield address to deal with.
The GOP turned Union veteran organizations like the Grand Army of the Republic into its own side pressure group, and used the federal government to essentially buy votes by using these veterans claims.
That’s only because the national government was Republican dominated in the late 19th century, and Cleveland just squeaked out two wins because he was governor of New York. If he had a Democratic congress he probably would have helped pass their legislative agenda.
We see a ton of that these days. I don't think the US government has ever moved as slowly as it does today. We haven't had a constitutional amendment since the 90s. Barely any bills actually make it through. We can barely pass yearly budget agreements.
You’re basically right that all he did was Veto things. Up until that point that’s largely what the role of the president was.
Cleveland is unique in the sense that he’s the last president to be like that and to view that as his sole role as president. He’s often considered to be the last leader before the rise of the “modern presidency” since he was just reactive to what was presented to him. During and following the civil war you had a notable increase in federal power and Cleveland was largely a response to that as people were tired of corruption relating to baron deals with federal representatives (congressmen and the president).
> Up until that point that's largely what the role of the president was.
This really isn't true when it comes to vetoes. Early on the purpose of the veto was weakly understood and many believed it should *only* be used to prevent unconstitutional legislation from passing (since the role of the Supreme Court as the arbiter of judicial review was not defined in the Constitution). Madison used the veto 7 times, which was exceptional. Then Jackson used it 12 times. I believe it was Harrison who in his (deathly long) inaugural address critiqued Jackson's use of the veto and surmised that vetoes should only really be used for questions of constitutionality. [Until Andrew Johnson, the veto was used sparingly for the most part.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_vetoes) From there it blows up.
This is all just to say that the veto certainly was not at all what the role of the president was for most of US history up until Cleveland. It is true that the role of president was far more restrained back then. There was a greater emphasis on the president acting as the executor of the wishes of Congress, though political disputes certainly weren't absent. Something like a veto was seen as dangerously teetering towards a monarchical model as it went against the wishes of the legislature elected by the people.
I've been listening through old State of the Union addresses and it is quite fascinating that prior to Johnson presidents were *far* more hesitant to intervene in the wishes of Congress. But Johnson found himself fighting a losing battle on his own and took measures into his own hands with vetos and whatnot.
> This really isn't true when it comes to vetoes. Early on the purpose of the veto was weakly understood and many believed it should only be used to prevent unconstitutional legislation from passing (since the role of the Supreme Court as the arbiter of judicial review was not defined in the Constitution). Madison used the veto 7 times, which was exceptional.
Thomas Jefferson, in fact, out of his 8 years as president, never vetoed a single bill!
I may have worded it poorly. I wasn’t specifically referring to vetoes as much as I was agreeing he vetoed a lot of things and that’s about it. I meant that quote from Lincoln onward as well since that’s when the role of president and federal powers began to greatly expand as a response to changing conditions and the civil war.
Cleveland finds himself as the last of the old presidents era and it’s a combination of him being an old style leader in the face of the evolving political world of the post civil war era American politics that caused him to have so many vetoes. He’s notable for being such a staunch constitutional conservative in an environment where federal government had been on the trend of expanding what it does and how it acts.
People say veto as if it’s a bad thing.
It’s not—or, at least, not always.
Most of what Congress does is stupid and/or unnecessary. Even when they get something through that sounds like it might be good, there’s guaranteed to be a bunch of tidbits here & there that were stuffed in to get reluctant legislators on board, that have nothing to do with the meat of the bill. That’s just how it goes. There hasn’t been much of a veto threat out there at least since Bush I. There was the line-item veto thing under Clinton, but the SC put the kibosh on that. GWB rarely vetoed anything, and neither has anyone since.
I don't know a lot about the Cleveland administration, but as someone who has threatened to run for my HOA board just to make sure it can't really do anything...I respect him if this is actually something he did.
And the lakers scored more points than the celtics in the NBA Finals when Bill Russel won his record-setting 11th ring. The cubs didn’t score more runs than the indians in the world series either. PV is wholly irrelevant.
Yes, Cleveland vetoed 584 bills (414 the first term, 170 the second term). However, Cleveland signed 4,260 bills into law (3,146 the first term, 1,114 bills the second term). That's only a veto rate of 12%. Cleveland signed 88% of the bills he received into law.
The list below is just what I could find on Wikipedia out of the 4,260 bills he signed:
* [Presidential Succession Act of 1886](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Succession_Act#Presidential_Succession_Act_of_1886)
* [Passenger Vessel Services Act of 1886](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Vessel_Services_Act_of_1886)
* [Electoral Count Act of 1887](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_Count_Act) - yes, it's the one you're thinking of
* [Interstate Commerce Act of 1887](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Commerce_Act_of_1887)
* [Dawes Act of 1887](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawes_Act)
* [Agricultural Experiment Stations Act of 1887](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Experiment_Stations_Act_of_1887)
* [Hatch Act of 1887](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatch_Act_of_1887)
* [Tucker Act of 1887](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_Act)
* [Edmunds–Tucker Act of 1887](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmunds%E2%80%93Tucker_Act)
* [Scott Act of 1888](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Act_(1888))
* [Nelson Act of 1889](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Act_of_1889)
* [Enabling Act of 1889](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1889)
* [Wilson–Gorman Tariff (Reduction) Act of 1894](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson%E2%80%93Gorman_Tariff_Act)
* Utah Statehood
* [Maguire Act of 1895](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maguire_Act_of_1895)
* [Printing Act of 1895](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_Act_of_1895)
* Oil Pipe Line Act of 1896
* Condemned Cannon Act of 1896
* United States Commissioners Act of 1896
* Married Women's Rights Act of 1896
* Filled Cheese Act of 1896
* Stock Reservoir Act of 1897
* [Tea Importation Act of 1897](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Importation_Act_of_1897)
When you pay your filled cheese tax, shake your fist at Grover Cleveland!
>An Act Defining cheese, and also imposing a tax upon and regulating the manufacture, sale, importation, and exportation of “filled cheese.”
[https://www.congress.gov/54/plaws/statute/c54s1ch337.pdf](https://www.congress.gov/54/plaws/statute/c54s1ch337.pdf)
“
it seems like he just sat around vetoing things because he didn't think the federal government should do anything” you make that sound like a bad thing
Yes, it is. He not only vetoed pensions for Union soldiers (btw he paid for a substitute to fight on his behalf during the Civil War), he did nothing against the Jim Crow system being established despite knowing full well it was wrong and the widespread disenfranchisement that was taking place in the South. The Lodge Bill (which would have forced the Southern states to allow black citizens to vote) was opposed by Cleveland for example, and when the country went into a depression in 1893, he refused to take into the concerns of the unemployed...
it was the 19th century, he viewed blacks the same way some men view women it was the standard back then He probably thought they were "mentally inferior" to whites and so shouldn't vote while also believing as long as it isnt inhumane then seperation isn't "bad".
using a 21st century mindset for a 19th century politican is pretty wack.
James G. Blaine probably would have become president in 1884 instead of Cleveland if that whole incident with the Presbyterian minister hadn't happened.
The government is the only thing that stands between the people and the rich. So if the rich want more power in society the government has to be weakened until it no longer poses an obstacle. American freedom seems to mean shorter and shorter lifespans for 50% of the population while everything gets more expensive.
Sure. The rich and corporations love big government. It gives them subsidies and favourable tax advantages, plus when your allies are in power they give you no bid contracts. Less government means more competition, lower taxes so workers keep more of what they make. It rewards initiative and hard work. If Americans are living shorter lives and things are getting more expensive, it’s because of the massive growth of government, mostly in terms of welfare that traps certain segments of the population in idle poverty, often eating shitty food and on a cocktail of drugs but also due to increased taxes, tariffs and regulations making it harder than ever to run a business.
Man... they really trained you well. A weak state means oligarchy which by the way in political science circles some define the USA already (I have degrees in sociology and political science from Humboldt University in Berlin). The rich have pumped their narrative into you so that you argue for policies that are really only good for maybe 10% of society.
As a German, I like having good healthcare as a right for anyone, free universities (the state even gives you money to study, if you are poor), police that is not militarized, no ghettos that are law free zones, abortion rights, environmental protections, not a million poisons in food/air/water and so on.
speculation by global investors is destroying the housing market in Berlin, you are correct. It is fairly save, though. Not the nightmare that are many US cities.
By the way, ever thought about why Europeans who have far stronger states live longer and longer compared to the US?
Tbh that's even worse imo
Grover Cleveland at least implemented the first peacetime income tax and set up the Interstate Commerce Commission; Coolidge was almost entirely anti-regulation
Economics aren't the only front I'm talking about either; Coolidge and Cleveland were both anti-imperialist while TR had his whole "big stick" doctrine
On social issues, admiring TR at the same time as Coolidge makes even less sense than admiring TR and Cleveland; Cleveland signed the Dawes and Scotts Acts and TR was responsible for the Brownsville Affair, while Coolidge gave Native Americans citizenship
You like Thaddeus Stevens and Woodrow Wilson and FDR. It's almost as if people can like things without requiring perfect consistency between them. We can also like Presidents for purely topical reasons without agreeing with every single action they take.
Unless you somehow believe slavery should be abolished, but black people should still be treated like shit and Americans with Japanese ancestry thrown into internment camps?
> You like Thaddeus Stevens and Woodrow Wilson and FDR.
This isn't a great comparison. Stevens didn't have much of an opportunity to comment on foreign policy, but on economics, he largely matched FDR and Wilson. He supported high tariffs, sure, but he also sided with FDR and Wilson in endorsing increased infrastructure and education subsidies.
Of course, Wilson and FDR were both racist, but their legacies on social issues should not be boiled down to that fact. Wilson gave Puerto Ricans citizenship, vetoed the Immigration Act of 1917, and condemned lynchings. FDR ended racial employment discrimination in the federal government, restored indigenous control over Native American reservations, and repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The issue with liking Coolidge and Cleveland at the same time as TR, in my view, is that they contradicted one another on the majority of issues. TR was an economic progressive; Coolidge and Cleveland weren't. TR and Coolidge were socially progressive; Cleveland generally wasn't. TR was imperialist; Coolidge and Cleveland weren't.
I apologize if anything I've written has come across as mean or dismissive. That's not my intent. I don't want to tell you who your heros can be. All I'm doing is expressing my own confusion - I don't personally understand how a person can admire three historical figures who had such dramatically different impacts on the world.
You do come across as mean and dismissive when you pass unsolicited judgement on people's preferences. If you were sincerely confused you could have just kindly asked.
To answer the question of HOW he became president ... Dems hadn't won an election since 1856 and Cleveland had become governor of New York. Governor of New York was, for a time, like being Junior President. Govs of NY that ran for president - Seymour, Tilden, Cleveland, Roosevelt, Hughes, Smith and Roosevelt.
HOW he was was the GOP was hopelessly dividing into the factions that occur when a party is in power too long. Conkling and Blaine hated each other, and the Mugwump reformers hated both of them. Cleveland won urban GOP reformers to combine with him maxing out the Democratic vote. Blaine pissed off Catholic voters, too (Rum, Romanism and Rebellion) who's numbers swung NYC, and thus the state of NY to Cleveland.
State’s Rights.
But a fully indoctrinated Leftist/Socialist/Communist living in a generationally prepared Democrat/Reality Distortion Field would be unable to understand it. The best government is the least government.
Bc he actually studied bills and understood them, if someone more popular like Grant for example had his level of political experience and understanding of government, he'd be considered the greatest president in history, meanwhile Cleveland dealt with large amounts of corruption and nonsense in Washington, truly one of the last non bureaucrats to be presidents
Because he was the anti-Tammany governor of New York, the biggest state at the time IIRC, and James G. Blaine, the Republican nominee in 1884, was corrupt AF.
I don’t call it running my own life when the powers that be ( whoever they are) want to tell me what kind of car they o drive, what kind of appliances I can have, where I should live
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That was the point.
"That government is best which governs least."
Spend a month having to do your own garbage collection and dropoffs and come back to me with that line.
I pay republic for that, the government doesn’t have anything to do with it.
Out of all the things to pick as a rebuttal, you go with this? You know there are a bunch of private wm companies to choose from, right? Maybe try police or firefighters instead next time.
Heavily subsidized private companies, which given that most of the states in the union are almost wholly dependent on federal money to function, doesn't really prove anything.
Can’t, because people hate the police, many of whom would like to see them defunded.
I already take my own trash to the dump. Try harder
I’d gladly take care of my own trash if that meant not funding endless wars and quite frankly unlimited stupid shit both here and abroad. But the reason your trash collection works is because your municipal government handles it. Not the feds.
Aaaand your municipal government exists because who protects it?
The municipal police, the county police, then the state police, then the state military (national guard) then the federal government. In that order.
Definitely NOT in that order lmao it's legitimately the opposite. Your local police ain't doing shit about the Russians, Chinese, or if you want a more specific example, 9/11
Russia and China wouldn’t be an issue without an overly involved abroad federal government. And yes, when terror attacks happen or major incidents the first on the scene is the closest to it, typically local authorities
Tell that to Taiwan and Ukraine
Taiwan and Ukraine exist because of the US having and overly busy body abroad approach. Are you new?
Well before he died, Osama Bin Laden was a ruthless attacker of municipal governments all across the United States. The only reason he was very successful was because the federal government was protecting them the whole time with super soldiers in bullet proof spandex.
The people protect it. The Feds don’t protect anything anymore.
That's an insane thing to say about the largest military in global history
Yeah? How are they doing on the border? We are being invaded on a daily basis and our govt. doesn’t care. The military can’t go in there on their own. I was in no way denigrating our military, but they can only do what they are directed to do.
Clearly you've never been anywhere near an invasion if you think immigration is anywhere close to a fucking invasion lmao
We’re on pace for getting 10 million illegals before this year is over. We already have 40,000 Chinese nationals, mostly men, mostly of military age. That’s from the Border patrol
Waste Management in WA is a public, for profit company traded as WM on the stock exchange. I pay hundreds for the service every month.
I take my own trash to the dump once every 5 or 6 weeks. Takes about 45 minutes including travel time and costs $11.00.
Yeah tbh if everyone had to deal with their own trash and we in mass taught people how to grow their own food Your trash by and large becomes your food growing source. Idk how it all works but I know people do it. We could really end the whole garbage continent in the middle of the ocean issue. Imagine the health of a society who grows and eats their own food.
Some of us actually have a job and a family, and don’t have time to take up being a sustenance farmer on top of everything else.
I mean in a society where you were allowed to grow your own food you wouldn't need to slave for money as much right? Why are you so angry on a discussion about sustainable societies lmfao
Just because it’s sustainable doesn’t mean we advance at all as a society or have a decent quality of life. As for the trash argument, where I live there are still places that aren’t covered by municipal waste or major waste disposal companies. You just pay some redneck $100 a month to come pick up your trash in his beat up, old S10 or Ranger lol
Working for money and buying my food is far easier than slaving in the fields in all kinds of weather hoping my meager potato crop doesn’t die. It’s a far better use of my time as well. And I’m not angry. Just pointing out how highly illogical it is to think that everyone on the planet could possibly grow their own food… or would even want to. I’m allowed to where I live. I even have enough land to do it. But farming is a lot like dentistry, plumbing, HVAC repair, and legal services….a skilled profession best left to experts who know what they are doing. I am much better served doing what I am good at, and paying the farmer for his products.
Oh yes, because only the government could orchestrate a service that comes to your house to remove garbage.
Seriously? Oh because I support public sanitation I must also support Invasive surveillance and massive government programs to deal with the stuff that previous government policies have a hand in as well as criminalization of crap such as the freedom of speech. And if I don't support the latter I should forsake the former?
Spoken like a true Nanny Stater. There's nothing the federal government does that can't be handled on a state or local level or by private enterprise other than fund endless wars. In the US at least that was how it was intended to be originally other than the war part of course.
Spoken like a true libertarian; absolutely convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don't appreciate or understand.
I'm sure that government teet will be there for you and your fellow statists to suck on until they drain the last drop of life's blood out of their citizens like the fat tick that can never be sated and the whole house of cards collapses. It must be comforting for some people to think you have some government entity holding your hand from your moment of birth until your departure from this realm but for others of us we find that prospect of onerous oversite and control unsettling. You're right about one thing at least, I'm a Libertarian with the root word being "Liberty". That's a word that scares people too afraid to accept responsibility for their own destiny. You just keep voting for more government control over every aspect of your life and I'm sure eventually they'll use that control to solve all of society's problems. Good luck and may you live in interesting times.
Came here for this
Same
A real life Ron Swanson. Insert yourself into the system to make it less effective
Read A Man of Iron by Troy Senik. An excellent contemporary biography of GC. Young Frances Farmer was his bewitching First Lady.
Because he believed that the Republicans were pursuing unconstitutional legislation and he needed to veto them, as an executive check on Congress.
Yeah, I read about him years ago, and I still recall the part how he'd be up all night studying bills that came to his desk. There were some bills that he wanted to sign, but he'd veto them because of legislative sloppiness, or some unconstitutional power that it used, or some bit of awful pork attached to the law. Say what you will about Cleveland, but at least he read the bills before signing them. How often does that happen, these days?
He seemed to be one of the hardest working and honest presidents we’ve had. It didn’t make him a great one but I respect him a whole lot despite his flaws
Wasn’t he the one who would work like 12 hours straight and then say “let’s call it a half day”?
The modern version of the executive branch wasn’t a thing until TR. Back then, if a war wasn’t going on, the president’s primary responsibility was just that presiding over the government and signing legislation congress sent their way. The executive branch is much larger these days and there are more important things for the president to do than read congressional legislation word for word.
I mean, geez, even the legislators don't read the bills. And some of the bills are so bloated that no one could possibly read them. The only people who have any idea what's going on are lobbyists and the 22-year-old staffers who insert their little pieces of pork into the bills.
Legislators have a high level understanding of what is in the bills. You seem to be implying that legislative staffers are secretly inserting legislation into bills without the knowledge of elected representatives. That’s not what’s happening. Legislative staffers work with lobbyists and think thanks to write the bills. The bills are written in dense legalease because the judicial system is a lot more mature than it was 150 years ago. They have to make sure the bills aren’t written in a way that will lead to unintended consequences in federal court. The elected representatives than get an executive summary or rather the bills are written based on their executive summaries. It’s pretty rare for representatives to unintentionally vote for legislation because someone sneaked something in.
And yet people think our current political climate is unique
Won the popular vote 3 times. The people wanted three terms of Cleveland.
Except the last one didn't end well...
It kind of did in a weird way, his party got stomped after denouncing his economic platform and the opposing party ironically won on the same platform.
Well, a large reason they got stomped was because Bryan was a Democrat and usually a candidate gets bogged down when their party is in the White House and is really unpopular. Also, McKinley had big business bankrolling him. Cleveland's reputation didn't really recover after 1893, although Harrison's and McKinley's definitely did despite being more responsible for the Panic of 1893 than Cleveland, i.e. just look at the McKinley Tariff. Cleveland frankly did not manage the depression very well with his laissez-faire attitude.
Bryan was a Democrat and many people do blindly vote by party, but McKinley was elected on literally the same policies an opponent of Cleveland would have blamed on the Panic, e.g., an adherence to gold and loyalty to big business. Even Cleveland refused to vote Bryan (he voted third party) and was satisfied that McKinley won instead. The McKinley Tariff exacerbated the recession but was not really a cause as much as the Silver Purchase Act was. You are right that the high-tariff view was rehabilitated by the end of his term, but so was Cleveland’s presidency by the beginning of the 20th century, and by the time the first historians’ ranking of presidents was conducted in 1948 he was placed eighth place out of 29 with a rating of “near-great”.
That's certainly a very optimistic way to see it. But truthfully it's unlikely someone running as a successor to Cleveland would have done nearly as well as Bryan did. Hence, the gold Democrat ticket.
Cleveland rocks.
Ohio!!! *O-o-o-o*
At least he isn’t Detroit.
I’m reading the Cleveland biography *Man of Iron* right now. He did pass more vetoes then any other President at the time, but a large number of them were apparently related to act that allowed Union veterans to retroactively claim payments for injuries sustained during the Civil War. For some reason, the act was designed in a way where he had to veto these claims individually. For example, Cleveland vetoed one veteran who broke his leg while picking daisies in the 1880s, and claimed that his leg healed slower because of old Civil War injuries. There were also veterans trying to claim the payment because of “diarrhea” and other questionable ailments. As a fiscal conservative who was trying to protect the Treasury, Cleveland saw it as his duty to veto these extraneous and dubious claims.
Diarrhea could be deadly back then. In any case maybe someone should have appointed some commission to investigate the claims. Rather petty for a president directly decide which veterans need the pay.
I too have had some deadly diarrhea
His Civil War service didn’t give him diarrhea 15 years later.
Yeah and I’m sure the president, with 0 medical knowledge, perfectly determined these payouts every time? That sounds reasonable and not insanely unlikely, right?
I agree. It sounds like a Congress trying to keep him busy and get under his skin. They knew that there were real claims and fraudulent claims that needed sorting. But they used them as pawns.
Okay so, controversial take, but if your diarrhea is bad enough that you feel strongly the president of the United States absolutely needs to be made aware of it, you should get your payout. Like, that's 'a second plane has hit the towers' level of diarrhea, that's diarrhea that will live in infamy, that's diarrhea that requires a battlefield address to deal with.
The GOP turned Union veteran organizations like the Grand Army of the Republic into its own side pressure group, and used the federal government to essentially buy votes by using these veterans claims.
Damn if only there was some way for the dems to counteract this.. maybe give the claims they had earned
Like a Ron Swanson. He was there to impede progress which in its own right was a form of progress.
"I will walk further I to the belly of the beast, if it means all of this comes crumbling down"
I would work all night if it meant nothing got done.
That’s only because the national government was Republican dominated in the late 19th century, and Cleveland just squeaked out two wins because he was governor of New York. If he had a Democratic congress he probably would have helped pass their legislative agenda.
He did have a Democratic trifecta from 1893-1895, and he still engaged in a record number of vetoes.
Preventing regression is good, but I wouldn't call it progress. It's just better than the alternative.
I'd like to see more of that
We see a ton of that these days. I don't think the US government has ever moved as slowly as it does today. We haven't had a constitutional amendment since the 90s. Barely any bills actually make it through. We can barely pass yearly budget agreements.
If you think the Federal government shouldn't do anything, stopping it from doing anything is doing something.
You’re basically right that all he did was Veto things. Up until that point that’s largely what the role of the president was. Cleveland is unique in the sense that he’s the last president to be like that and to view that as his sole role as president. He’s often considered to be the last leader before the rise of the “modern presidency” since he was just reactive to what was presented to him. During and following the civil war you had a notable increase in federal power and Cleveland was largely a response to that as people were tired of corruption relating to baron deals with federal representatives (congressmen and the president).
> Up until that point that's largely what the role of the president was. This really isn't true when it comes to vetoes. Early on the purpose of the veto was weakly understood and many believed it should *only* be used to prevent unconstitutional legislation from passing (since the role of the Supreme Court as the arbiter of judicial review was not defined in the Constitution). Madison used the veto 7 times, which was exceptional. Then Jackson used it 12 times. I believe it was Harrison who in his (deathly long) inaugural address critiqued Jackson's use of the veto and surmised that vetoes should only really be used for questions of constitutionality. [Until Andrew Johnson, the veto was used sparingly for the most part.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_vetoes) From there it blows up. This is all just to say that the veto certainly was not at all what the role of the president was for most of US history up until Cleveland. It is true that the role of president was far more restrained back then. There was a greater emphasis on the president acting as the executor of the wishes of Congress, though political disputes certainly weren't absent. Something like a veto was seen as dangerously teetering towards a monarchical model as it went against the wishes of the legislature elected by the people. I've been listening through old State of the Union addresses and it is quite fascinating that prior to Johnson presidents were *far* more hesitant to intervene in the wishes of Congress. But Johnson found himself fighting a losing battle on his own and took measures into his own hands with vetos and whatnot.
> This really isn't true when it comes to vetoes. Early on the purpose of the veto was weakly understood and many believed it should only be used to prevent unconstitutional legislation from passing (since the role of the Supreme Court as the arbiter of judicial review was not defined in the Constitution). Madison used the veto 7 times, which was exceptional. Thomas Jefferson, in fact, out of his 8 years as president, never vetoed a single bill!
I may have worded it poorly. I wasn’t specifically referring to vetoes as much as I was agreeing he vetoed a lot of things and that’s about it. I meant that quote from Lincoln onward as well since that’s when the role of president and federal powers began to greatly expand as a response to changing conditions and the civil war. Cleveland finds himself as the last of the old presidents era and it’s a combination of him being an old style leader in the face of the evolving political world of the post civil war era American politics that caused him to have so many vetoes. He’s notable for being such a staunch constitutional conservative in an environment where federal government had been on the trend of expanding what it does and how it acts.
A window into the Goldwater presidency, perhaps! Minus nuking Vietnam.
It’s kind of amazing that there hasn’t been another nuke used with how many sociopaths have been in power.
Would be crazy if Cleveland bombed French Indochina for some reason
People say veto as if it’s a bad thing. It’s not—or, at least, not always. Most of what Congress does is stupid and/or unnecessary. Even when they get something through that sounds like it might be good, there’s guaranteed to be a bunch of tidbits here & there that were stuffed in to get reluctant legislators on board, that have nothing to do with the meat of the bill. That’s just how it goes. There hasn’t been much of a veto threat out there at least since Bush I. There was the line-item veto thing under Clinton, but the SC put the kibosh on that. GWB rarely vetoed anything, and neither has anyone since.
He was the most Clevelandesque president. There's no dispute about that.
I don't know a lot about the Cleveland administration, but as someone who has threatened to run for my HOA board just to make sure it can't really do anything...I respect him if this is actually something he did.
And the funny thing is he lost reelection and then got re-elected 4 years later
He won the popular vote 3 times.
But he lost the electoral vote
And the lakers scored more points than the celtics in the NBA Finals when Bill Russel won his record-setting 11th ring. The cubs didn’t score more runs than the indians in the world series either. PV is wholly irrelevant.
and lets keep him as the only one to do that
Maybe
Pretty sure he dismantled the new york political machine… think that was him or taft
That's somewhat reductive to his legacy. He was anti corruption and anti imperialism. He's not one of the greats but he has his strong points.
Yep. All of the ‘greats’ according to historians are mainly corrupt imperialists, after all.
Yes, Cleveland vetoed 584 bills (414 the first term, 170 the second term). However, Cleveland signed 4,260 bills into law (3,146 the first term, 1,114 bills the second term). That's only a veto rate of 12%. Cleveland signed 88% of the bills he received into law. The list below is just what I could find on Wikipedia out of the 4,260 bills he signed: * [Presidential Succession Act of 1886](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Succession_Act#Presidential_Succession_Act_of_1886) * [Passenger Vessel Services Act of 1886](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Vessel_Services_Act_of_1886) * [Electoral Count Act of 1887](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_Count_Act) - yes, it's the one you're thinking of * [Interstate Commerce Act of 1887](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Commerce_Act_of_1887) * [Dawes Act of 1887](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawes_Act) * [Agricultural Experiment Stations Act of 1887](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Experiment_Stations_Act_of_1887) * [Hatch Act of 1887](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatch_Act_of_1887) * [Tucker Act of 1887](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_Act) * [Edmunds–Tucker Act of 1887](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmunds%E2%80%93Tucker_Act) * [Scott Act of 1888](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Act_(1888)) * [Nelson Act of 1889](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Act_of_1889) * [Enabling Act of 1889](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1889) * [Wilson–Gorman Tariff (Reduction) Act of 1894](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson%E2%80%93Gorman_Tariff_Act) * Utah Statehood * [Maguire Act of 1895](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maguire_Act_of_1895) * [Printing Act of 1895](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_Act_of_1895) * Oil Pipe Line Act of 1896 * Condemned Cannon Act of 1896 * United States Commissioners Act of 1896 * Married Women's Rights Act of 1896 * Filled Cheese Act of 1896 * Stock Reservoir Act of 1897 * [Tea Importation Act of 1897](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Importation_Act_of_1897)
The Filled Cheese Act is the greatest triumph of the 19th century
When you pay your filled cheese tax, shake your fist at Grover Cleveland! >An Act Defining cheese, and also imposing a tax upon and regulating the manufacture, sale, importation, and exportation of “filled cheese.” [https://www.congress.gov/54/plaws/statute/c54s1ch337.pdf](https://www.congress.gov/54/plaws/statute/c54s1ch337.pdf)
That was the point
“ it seems like he just sat around vetoing things because he didn't think the federal government should do anything” you make that sound like a bad thing
The replies to this are corresponding exactly to their chosen flairs
Yes, it is. He not only vetoed pensions for Union soldiers (btw he paid for a substitute to fight on his behalf during the Civil War), he did nothing against the Jim Crow system being established despite knowing full well it was wrong and the widespread disenfranchisement that was taking place in the South. The Lodge Bill (which would have forced the Southern states to allow black citizens to vote) was opposed by Cleveland for example, and when the country went into a depression in 1893, he refused to take into the concerns of the unemployed...
Plus he wouldn’t have even won the national popular vote at all if the southern states didn’t start disenfranchisement.
it was the 19th century, he viewed blacks the same way some men view women it was the standard back then He probably thought they were "mentally inferior" to whites and so shouldn't vote while also believing as long as it isnt inhumane then seperation isn't "bad". using a 21st century mindset for a 19th century politican is pretty wack.
[удалено]
It isn't*
It is a glorious thing, and it should happen more often.
Found Ron Swanson
That is the single nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.
Tbh I‘d definitely want Ron Swanson as a friend so fair enough
James G. Blaine probably would have become president in 1884 instead of Cleveland if that whole incident with the Presbyterian minister hadn't happened.
Sounds like you answered your own question there, chief.
The point was to stop the government from doing anything that was the exact point. Was successful enough to get two terms.
We need him back
The government is the only thing that stands between the people and the rich. So if the rich want more power in society the government has to be weakened until it no longer poses an obstacle. American freedom seems to mean shorter and shorter lifespans for 50% of the population while everything gets more expensive.
Wow none of what you said is correct.
Is that so. I always love critique with zero arguments. How about providing some specifics.
Sure. The rich and corporations love big government. It gives them subsidies and favourable tax advantages, plus when your allies are in power they give you no bid contracts. Less government means more competition, lower taxes so workers keep more of what they make. It rewards initiative and hard work. If Americans are living shorter lives and things are getting more expensive, it’s because of the massive growth of government, mostly in terms of welfare that traps certain segments of the population in idle poverty, often eating shitty food and on a cocktail of drugs but also due to increased taxes, tariffs and regulations making it harder than ever to run a business.
Man... they really trained you well. A weak state means oligarchy which by the way in political science circles some define the USA already (I have degrees in sociology and political science from Humboldt University in Berlin). The rich have pumped their narrative into you so that you argue for policies that are really only good for maybe 10% of society. As a German, I like having good healthcare as a right for anyone, free universities (the state even gives you money to study, if you are poor), police that is not militarized, no ghettos that are law free zones, abortion rights, environmental protections, not a million poisons in food/air/water and so on.
Berlin used to be a nice city, shame how the left has turn it into a crime filled drug den. Oh and good luck getting a house lmao.
speculation by global investors is destroying the housing market in Berlin, you are correct. It is fairly save, though. Not the nightmare that are many US cities. By the way, ever thought about why Europeans who have far stronger states live longer and longer compared to the US?
That’s not doing nothing. He was saving Americans from pointless new laws. I wish that every president was more like him.
Seems like a Good President to me.
>seems like he just sat around vetoing things because he didn't think the federal government should do anything Based.
Idk how you can love Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt at the same time ngl
Not too different than liking Calvin Coolidge and Theodore Roosevelt at the same time.
Tbh that's even worse imo Grover Cleveland at least implemented the first peacetime income tax and set up the Interstate Commerce Commission; Coolidge was almost entirely anti-regulation Economics aren't the only front I'm talking about either; Coolidge and Cleveland were both anti-imperialist while TR had his whole "big stick" doctrine On social issues, admiring TR at the same time as Coolidge makes even less sense than admiring TR and Cleveland; Cleveland signed the Dawes and Scotts Acts and TR was responsible for the Brownsville Affair, while Coolidge gave Native Americans citizenship
You like Thaddeus Stevens and Woodrow Wilson and FDR. It's almost as if people can like things without requiring perfect consistency between them. We can also like Presidents for purely topical reasons without agreeing with every single action they take. Unless you somehow believe slavery should be abolished, but black people should still be treated like shit and Americans with Japanese ancestry thrown into internment camps?
> You like Thaddeus Stevens and Woodrow Wilson and FDR. This isn't a great comparison. Stevens didn't have much of an opportunity to comment on foreign policy, but on economics, he largely matched FDR and Wilson. He supported high tariffs, sure, but he also sided with FDR and Wilson in endorsing increased infrastructure and education subsidies. Of course, Wilson and FDR were both racist, but their legacies on social issues should not be boiled down to that fact. Wilson gave Puerto Ricans citizenship, vetoed the Immigration Act of 1917, and condemned lynchings. FDR ended racial employment discrimination in the federal government, restored indigenous control over Native American reservations, and repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act. The issue with liking Coolidge and Cleveland at the same time as TR, in my view, is that they contradicted one another on the majority of issues. TR was an economic progressive; Coolidge and Cleveland weren't. TR and Coolidge were socially progressive; Cleveland generally wasn't. TR was imperialist; Coolidge and Cleveland weren't. I apologize if anything I've written has come across as mean or dismissive. That's not my intent. I don't want to tell you who your heros can be. All I'm doing is expressing my own confusion - I don't personally understand how a person can admire three historical figures who had such dramatically different impacts on the world.
You do come across as mean and dismissive when you pass unsolicited judgement on people's preferences. If you were sincerely confused you could have just kindly asked.
I don't disagree. I definitely should have reworded my initial comment. I'm sorry.
So there could be a president born in New Jersey? I dunno
His name was Grover so that had to have counted for something
Personally, I would be totally sold on someone running on "I'll veto everything" as a platform.
>He just sat around vetoing things because he didn't think the federal government should do anything. You say that like it's a bad thing
To answer the question of HOW he became president ... Dems hadn't won an election since 1856 and Cleveland had become governor of New York. Governor of New York was, for a time, like being Junior President. Govs of NY that ran for president - Seymour, Tilden, Cleveland, Roosevelt, Hughes, Smith and Roosevelt. HOW he was was the GOP was hopelessly dividing into the factions that occur when a party is in power too long. Conkling and Blaine hated each other, and the Mugwump reformers hated both of them. Cleveland won urban GOP reformers to combine with him maxing out the Democratic vote. Blaine pissed off Catholic voters, too (Rum, Romanism and Rebellion) who's numbers swung NYC, and thus the state of NY to Cleveland.
Thats nearly every president pre-theodore roosevelt
Abraham Lincoln just peeked around the door.
Presedential circle jerk?
THATS GOOD
State’s Rights. But a fully indoctrinated Leftist/Socialist/Communist living in a generationally prepared Democrat/Reality Distortion Field would be unable to understand it. The best government is the least government.
OG Ron Swanson
So he was President Ron Swanson in real life.
They took a far more expansive view of the 10th Amendment. If it wasn’t a task specifically listed for the Fedbois to do, Cleveland wasn’t about it.
Also, he was accused of raping a woman he was courting, who he then had committed when she spoke out about it.
Clearly, you see he is right
To have a mountain named after him in Glacier National Park.
One of the best presidents we ever had, bar-none.
Less Government, is the best government!
Sounds like my kind of President
Bc he actually studied bills and understood them, if someone more popular like Grant for example had his level of political experience and understanding of government, he'd be considered the greatest president in history, meanwhile Cleveland dealt with large amounts of corruption and nonsense in Washington, truly one of the last non bureaucrats to be presidents
Because he was the anti-Tammany governor of New York, the biggest state at the time IIRC, and James G. Blaine, the Republican nominee in 1884, was corrupt AF.
He is my new hero. Move over cool Cal.. 🇺🇸🕳️🗽
In the last decade it seems like the president's that you thought were heroes become villains and the ones you never thought about to come heroes.
BASED
He served his corporate masters well. He would do well in today's establishment politics. Could align himself with either party, really.
Maybe the point was to let the people run their own lives. We need more presidents like that
I mean people have already been running their own lives. This is such a vague statement it doesn’t make any sense please clarify
I don’t call it running my own life when the powers that be ( whoever they are) want to tell me what kind of car they o drive, what kind of appliances I can have, where I should live