Grover Cleveland: How the only other president to win back White House compares with Trump

New president-elect could learn from 19th-century Democrat predecessor, who also had a colourful life story

Donald Trump is only the second US president to regain the White House, repeating the feat of Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century.
Cleveland won the 1884 and 1892 elections, either side of defeat in 1888.
Others have tried, but US voters decided that one term was enough for Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, Ulysses S Grant, Teddy Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover.
There are echoes of Cleveland in Trump.
Both had “colourful” personal lives, which had little impact on their political prospects, with Cleveland, a Democrat, winning the 1884 election despite having to support an illegitimate son.
Trump avoided conscription to Vietnam after a doctor diagnosed he had bone spurs, while Cleveland sidestepped the 1863 Conscription Act and paid a Polish immigrant to take his place and fight in the Civil War.
Trump defeated a sitting vice-president, while Cleveland won the 1892 election ousting Benjamin Harrison, who had beaten him four years before.
There are, however, notable differences.
Cleveland wanted to lower tariffs, a policy which cost him dearly with workers in the industrial north east turning against him because they feared cheap imports would threaten their jobs.
Trump’s pledge to raise tariffs helped him win the support of blue-collar voters who deserted the Democrats, paving the way for the former president’s comeback.
The new president-elect could learn from Cleveland, Dr Mark Zachary Taylor, who wrote a biography of the 19th-century president told The Telegraph.
“‘Do compromise and don’t over-reach!’ he said.
“Cleveland did best when he worked with Congress and his party to pass major legislation. But he doomed the economy to years of depression when he shrank from coalition-building and stubbornly refused to budge on his governing philosophy,” Dr Taylor, a political scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, added.
“In fact, the depression of 1893 to 1897 was so bad that Cleveland’s Democratic party got swept from power for almost two decades, leaving Republicans to dominate throughout the land.”