Within weeks of his taking office, the political in-crowd was howling with anger as he cleaned out one area of corruption after another, bringing misery to political insiders - but genuine happiness to the general public of New York State.  This was not lost on the national Democratic Party leadership and at the 1884 national convention, he was nominated for President and won a close victory that November, winning both the popular vote and the Electoral college - thus rising from private citizen to Mayor of Buffalo to Governor of New York and ultimately, to President of the United States in less than four years!

Following his first term, he ran again, but this time lost the Electoral College despite winning the popular vote, allowing Benjamin Harrison to become President.  However, Cleveland was re-nominated by the Democratic Party in 1892 and once again won both the popular and Electoral College to become President once again - the only man to have "split" terms while also becoming the only man up to that time (FDR later won four consecutive popular votes) to win the popular vote on three consecutive occasions. 

I have always regarded Cleveland's Inaugural Address of March 1893 to be one of the most decisive speeches in America's political history as he clearly outlined what he believed were his basic fundamental principles for the political life of the nation.  I only wish those same principles were in effect through to this day.  Some of the most important quotes from that address are:

"Manifestly nothing is more vital to our supremacy as a nation and to the beneficent purposes of our Government than a sound and stable currency. Its exposure to degradation should at once arouse to activity the most enlightened statesmanship, and the danger of depreciation in the purchasing power of the wages paid to toil should furnish the strongest incentive to prompt and conservative precaution."

"Closely related to the exaggerated confidence in our country's greatness which tends to a disregard of the rules of national safety, another danger confronts us not less serious. I refer to the prevalence of a popular disposition to expect from the operation of the Government especial and direct individual advantages."

"...the unwholesome progeny of paternalism. This is the bane of republican institutions and the constant peril of our government by the people...It perverts the patriotic sentiments of our countrymen and tempts them to pitiful calculation of the sordid gain to be derived from their Government's maintenance. It undermines the self-reliance of our people and substitutes in its place dependence upon governmental favouritism.  The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government its functions do not include the support of the people." (*)

"It is a plain dictate of honesty and good government that public expenditures should be limited by public necessity, and that this should be measured by the rules of strict economy; and it is equally clear that frugality among the people is the best guaranty of a contented and strong support of free institutions."

"When we proclaim that the necessity for revenue to support the Government furnishes the only justification for taxing the people, we announce a truth so plain that its denial would seem to indicate the extent to which judgment may be influenced by familiarity with perversions of the taxing power."

"I shall to the best of my ability and within my sphere of duty preserve the Constitution by loyally protecting every grant of Federal power it contains, by defending all its restraints when attacked by impatience and restlessness, and by enforcing its limitations and reservations in favour of the States and the people."

One of the best summations of Cleveland's life was written by the eminent journalist, H. L. Mencken.  In an essay entitled, "A Good Man in a Bad Trade", Mencken wrote of Cleveland,

"We have had more brilliant Presidents than Cleveland, and one or two who were considerably more profound, but we have never had one, at least since Washington, whose fundamental character was solider or more admirable.  There was never any string tied to old Grover.  He got on in politics, not by knuckling to politicians, but by scorning and defying them, and when he found himself opposed in what he conceived to be sound and honest courses, not only by politicians but by the sovereign people, he treated them to a massive dose of the same medicine.  No more self-sufficient man is recorded in modern history...He came into office his own man and he went out without yielding anything of that character for an instant."

When I look at the array of today's politicians where sheen is supposed to substitute for depth, where lack of philosophy is supposed to be an asset and where consistency of principle is virtually never found, Cleveland stands out - at least in my own mind - ever the brighter.  As Mencken summarized,

"Thus it is pleasant to remember Cleveland and to speak of him from time to time.  He was the last of the Romans."

(*)  This quote is clearly the source of John F. Kennedy's more famous line written into his Inaugural Address of 1961.