THE OTHER TWO-TERM POTUS NOT SERIALLY ELECTED: 2 /8: A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency o1 Grover Cleveland Hardcover – by Troy Senik (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 11 November 2024
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Iron-Turbulent-Improbable-Presidency/dp/1982140747?ref_=ast_author_dp#customerReviews
Grover Cleveland’s political career—a dizzying journey that saw him rise from obscure lawyer to president of the United States in just three years—was marked by contradictions. A politician of uncharacteristic honesty and principle, he was nevertheless dogged by secrets from his personal life. A believer in limited government, he pushed presidential power to its limits to combat a crippling depression, suppress labor unrest, and resist the forces of American imperialism. A headstrong executive who alienated Congress, political bosses, and even his own party, his stubbornness nevertheless became the key to his political appeal. The most successful Democratic politician of his era, he came to be remembered most fondly by Republicans.
1885 FIRST INAUGURATION
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchew, Troy Seneca, a man of iron is Troy's new book, The Turbulent Life |
| 0:08.0 | and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland. |
| 0:11.0 | Born 1837, a preacher's kid. |
| 0:16.0 | Richard Cleveland, his father, a Yale graduate, a Princeton Seminary graduate, his mother, Anne, a German Quaker. |
| 0:23.9 | He grows up working hard, self-discipline, all of the templates associated with the Protestant Reformation. |
| 0:33.0 | At the same time, his family meets some hard times. |
| 0:40.8 | His father doesn't earn very much money, and he travels from roost to roost. His health is broken at one point, and the money has to be cut back. |
| 0:48.4 | Early on, Grover Cleveland had a sense of duty to his family, to his mother, to his father, |
| 0:53.6 | to his siblings. |
| 0:55.0 | Was that true for the whole family with these all hardworking young people? |
| 1:00.0 | To the extent that we have records, that does seem to be the case. |
| 1:03.0 | And it's a big family. Cleveland is the middle of nine children. |
| 1:07.0 | So even Cleveland himself, interestingly enough, as a president of the United States, |
| 1:12.6 | we have a pretty thin record of what his childhood was like. And we see, as you suggest, |
| 1:18.1 | these glimpses of this deep sense of duty that's in him. But it was a, it was a pretty |
| 1:25.7 | austere, pretty religious upbringing. And they all seemed to have had this deep work ethic, this deep sense of charity as well. I mean, Cleveland ends up. His father dies by the time he's 16. Cleveland himself has denied the ability to go to college because of this. |
| 1:45.7 | But as he moves into his adult life and starts making a decent salary, he's not keeping most of it. |
| 1:51.4 | I mean, most of it is actually being funneled back to the support of his widowed mother and the |
| 1:56.5 | education of his younger siblings. And that kind of character, as I say, to the extent that we glean it from the other siblings, does seem to be sort of a constant throughout the family. And by the way, interesting enough, kind of a constant of future generations of Cleveland's. We sort of see this in all of them. |
| 2:13.6 | Grover Cleveland begins his life as a clerk at 19 living above the store, and he will continue his education without college, self-taught. |
| 2:24.4 | At one point, he does a year in New York at the College of the Blind, was it the School of the Blind, teaching grammar? |
| 2:31.8 | That's right. This is just shortly after his father dies. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.