Review by Booklist Review
"Grover Cleveland's name would probably have been lost to history if he didn't love beer so damn much." This droll observation in Senik's biography of the twenty-second and twenty-fourth president of the U.S. refers to a chance 1881 encounter Cleveland had in a Buffalo, New York, tavern with local Democrats. They needed a mayoral candidate. Why not Cleveland, respected lawyer and former sheriff of the surrounding county? Thus was launched Cleveland's meteoric ascent to New York's governorship and to the U.S. presidency within three years. Offering an array of explanations for Cleveland's rise, Senik centers on Cleveland's character. It was cautious, moralistic, and determined. Once he decided his stance on an issue, Cleveland almost never reneged, regardless of political consequences. As politicians in Buffalo and Tammany Hall seethed over Cleveland's vetoes of their venal projects, the public viewed Cleveland as a good-government custodian of public funds, which he was. Traversing Cleveland's two separate presidential terms, Senik delivers an entertaining and astute assessment of his executive actions that explains why historians regularly rate Cleveland highly among U.S. presidents.
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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms in office, Grover Cleveland (1837--1908) was more than the answer to a trivia question, according to this entertaining biography. Senik, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, characterizes Cleveland as a fierce opponent of corruption who was willing "to follow principle regardless of the political consequences." Though this integrity sparked Cleveland's meteoric rise from mayor of Buffalo, N.Y., to governor to president within the span of three years, it backfired politically when he was in the White House and opposed factions of his Democratic Party on such issues as tariff reform, the Pullman labor strike, and the gold standard. After winning the popular vote but losing in the electoral college to Benjamin Harrison in 1888, Cleveland reclaimed the presidency in 1892. Senik details Cleveland's personal scandals--including allegations that he fathered a child out of wedlock and institutionalized the child's mother; his marriage, while president, to a 21-year-old woman who had once been his ward; and the "massive cover-up" over his secret surgery to remove a cancerous tumor during the financial panic of 1893--but never seriously challenges his subject's "moral probity." Well-researched if biased, this is an enjoyable reconsideration of an underappreciated American president. Agents: Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn, Javelin. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Senik, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, offers a colloquial, wittily written biography, based on primary sources, of the only U.S. president to win two non-consecutive terms. According to Senik, President Grover Cleveland arguably stood out during the Gilded Age because of his integrity and relative non-partisanship. With his often anti-labor (Pullman Strike), anti-interventionist (in Hawai'i), and sound monetary policies (opposed to the free coinage of silver), Cleveland is more admired, in retrospect, by Republicans than by his fellow Democrats. Although historians have not neglected Cleveland's rapid political rise (see the biographies by Allan Nevins, Rexford Tugwell, Alyn Brodsky, and Henry Graff), contemporary lay audiences are more likely to have been impressed by his personal and political failings, as is clear here. For instance, Cleveland was frank about having fathered a child outside of marriage, and his politics were marked by racism toward Black, Chinese, and Indigenous Americans, whom he sought to assimilate, through education, into a hegemonist national culture. VERDICT This biography may surprise readers; how many know about the thwarted movement to draft Cleveland for a third term in 1904? Or that Cleveland's 21-year old bride was the youngest wife of a president but not the youngest woman to function as First Lady?--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Robust biography of an overlooked president. There aren't many good reasons that Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) is largely forgotten alongside such fellow presidents as Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce, yet there he is. Granted, writes former George W. Bush speechwriter Senik, he "didn't look like a president. He looked like a foundry foreman." Bulky, but with an oddly high-pitched and nasal voice, he had a quick temper accentuated by the habit of pounding his fist on a table to make an objection known. Cleveland certainly has demerits on his resume. For one, surrounded by Civil War generals who entered politics, he paid a Polish immigrant (who, happily, survived the war unscathed) to take his place, leading to the charge that he "was an unpatriotic elite who bought his way out of the war." The elite part is wrong, Senik holds, for Cleveland was a working man who was more or less swept into politics without having much in the way of political ambition, and one who "was perpetually sensitive to the fact that his mandate was to rise above reflexive party loyalty." As both governor of New York and president, he forged coalitions that frequently had more Republican than Democratic support, and many of his positions, especially on fiscal matters, were conservative. Yet, as Senik enumerates, he also established progressive policies, including requiring corporations to file quarterly financial reports and pressing for penal reforms to limit the use of force in prison, since "he suspected the authorities were exceeding the letter of the law." He opposed the plot to overthrow the government of independent Hawaii, and he had a determinedly anti-imperialist bent. Freely exercising his veto power, his central conviction was that "government exists to protect the welfare of the people as a whole." Practical rather than ideological, he got plenty done. A capably written introduction to a political leader who, though no rock star, deserves to be better known. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
