Chatter: Presidents Who Lose and Run Again with Troy Senik
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 December 2022
⏱️ 83 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Donald Trump is trying to do something rare—very rare—in American history: lose a presidential election, run again, and get elected to a second term. Only one president, the underappreciated Grover Cleveland, has ever accomplished that feat. Yet his story remains largely unknown.
David Priess invited Troy Senik, author of a new biography of Grover Cleveland called, “A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland,” to Chatter to explore how the stories of rejected presidents in the past shed light on Trump's effort to retake the Oval Office now—with a whole lotta Grover in the conversation.
They discussed how we rate U.S. leaders, the cases of presidents who lost their reelection bids and then tried again, what drove those men to do so, Grover Cleveland's formative experiences, his political offices in New York, how he became president, his predilection for vetoes, his loss in 1888, his comeback in 1892, why Cleveland is largely forgotten, how our views of presidents change over time, how Cleveland's effort in 1892 to regain the presidency compares to Trump's attempt now, and more.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | I'm Will Appleton with an episode of chatter for December 25, 2022. |
| 0:38.6 | For today's episode, the team at LawFair decided to cross-post this week's episode of |
| 0:42.7 | chatter, a podcast hosted by David Pries and Shane Harris that features in-depth discussions |
| 0:48.4 | with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security. |
| 0:52.2 | Today's episode of chatter is entitled, Presidents Who Lose and Run Again with Troy Sannick. |
| 0:58.0 | In the episode, Pries set down with Sannick to chat about Grover Cleveland, the only president |
| 1:02.6 | to lose a reelection bid, run again, and secure a second term. |
| 1:06.7 | They also discussed other cases of presidents who lost reelection bids and then ran again, |
| 1:11.7 | how Cleveland's efforts to regain the presidency compared to former President Trump's current |
| 1:16.4 | attempt, how we rate US leaders and more. |
| 1:20.2 | This is chatter. |
| 1:31.0 | Welcome to chatter. |
| 1:32.0 | I'm David Pries, publisher of LawFair. |
| 1:34.5 | This week, author Troy Sannick, on Presidents Who Lose and Run Again. |
| 1:39.6 | Here's this weird thing where if something hasn't happened recently, we tend to think |
| 1:45.8 | it's impossible. |
| 1:46.9 | So up until a few years ago, the idea of a next president coming back to run again on |
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