Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on today's show is Troy Seneca. Troy is the co-founder of kite and key media, a former presidential speechwriter,

and a former vice president here at the Manhattan Institute. He's the author of a brand new book

called A Man of Iron, The Turbulent Life, An Improbable Presidency of Grover

Cleveland. It's a biography of the man who served as both 22nd and 24th President. So,

Troy, great to talk with you, and thanks for joining. Delighted to be with you, Brian.

Now, many of our listeners might know Grover Cleveland only by that bit of trivia that I mentioned.

He's the only president to have served two non-consecutive terms in office.

But your book makes the case that he deserves a wider amount of attention, wider study.

As you note, while there is no good case for him to be on Mount Rushmore, there is likewise no good reason that he should be entirely absent from America's historical memory.

Surely there is room for him in the ranks of presidents we regard as distinctive

and significant. Now, was this a conclusion you had before starting the book, or did Cleveland's

distinctiveness, his significance rise in your estimation as you worked on this project?

A little bit of both. It is a conclusion that I was

leaning towards coming into the book, and then the deeper I got into his life, the more firm I became

in this conviction. And what I really mean by that, so there's an obvious sort of first tier of

American presidents, which includes the group on Mount Rushmore and a few others, the ones that everybody sort of knows, even if they're not that deep into American history or the history of the presidency.

But there is this sort of second tier of people who I think are worth remembering because maybe the era that they inhabited wasn't

as dramatic as some of the first tier presidents.

Although, as I argue in the book, Cleveland's era is actually a lot more dramatic than we

usually remember it as.

But mainly, this is a group of guys who are worth remembering because there was something

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