The former president is ready for a comeback despite being a political novice and facing a sex

scandal that nearly ended his campaign. He took down a titan of the political establishment

in a first bid for the White House, squeezing into office by the slimmest of margins.

After four years of disrupting business as usual in Washington, he was denied re-election in a

close race that some of his supporters claimed was stolen from him. And now he looks poised for a

third presidential run at a historic restoration to office. The year is 1892 and the former president

in question is not Donald Trump or anyone even remotely like him. It's Grover Cleveland.

Troy Seneca, the author of a splendid new biography on Grover Cleveland,

on Uncommon Knowledge Now.

Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge, I'm Peter Robinson. A graduate of Belmont University and

Pepperdine, Troy Seneca served as a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

He has written extensively on politics, served as vice president of the Manhattan Institute

and hosts the Law Talk podcast. He is also a founder of Kite and Key, a digital media company devoted

to public policy. And now Troy Seneca has published a book, A Man of Iron, the turbulent life and

improbable presidency of Grover Cleveland. Troy, welcome. Peter, delighted to be with you.

All right, I'm going to begin with the back of this book. I'm quoting from the acknowledgements.

You write about your pals, Matt Latimer and Keith Urban, who run something called Javelin,

the literary agency. And you mentioned that, quote, during a purely social visit,

they told you there was a market for a new Grover Cleveland biography. By the way, that strikes me

as an odd conversation right there. But it gets stranger. Neither of them realizing that they

were sitting across the table from someone, Troy Seneca, who had been nursing that ambition

for the better part of two decades. Close, quote. You spent almost 20 years wanting to write a

...