This is John Batchel, a conversation with Troy Sennick for his book on Grover Cleveland,

A Man of Iron, the turbulent life and improbable presidency of Grover Cleveland.

You will recall that Grover Cleveland was elected twice, 84, and again in 92, a gap in between

the Republicans out of the White House.

What is significant here is that in Cleveland's second term, Troy makes the case very

carefully and convincingly that the party had gone in a new direction from a man who

wanted to balance the books, only spend what the government had to

spend, extremely conservative, recognizable conservative, even libertarian in his views of how the

government should function. But of course, the Democratic Party was moving in the direction of

William Jennings Bryan,

the nominee in 96, and again twice more for the party.

The progressives, progressive, the populist from the plain states.

And Grover Cleveland, as Troy says here,

nobody cared what he thought come the midterm of his second administration. It's a

helpful way to think about the presidency and what can go wrong in a re-election. Reminding that

Mr. Trump is the second man to win a second term non-serially. Here's Troy Seneca on the first man,

Grover Cleveland. Yeah, I mean, what you really see with Cleveland in relation to the Democratic

Party is by the time you get into the middle of the second term, he has already become sort of

yesterday's man. They have really moved beyond him. There

are divisions in the party on tariffs. There are divisions in the party on monetary policy,

on silver. And Cleveland ends up, you know, in the last few years of his administration,

one of his clerks records that by the end, he is getting about as much

...