The politician who intimidated TR: 2/8: A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland by Troy Senik
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
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🗓️ 22 May 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
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The politician who intimidated TR: 2/8: A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland by Troy Senik
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
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Datsuo, a Troyssonic. A man of iron is Troys' new book, The Turbident Life |
| 0:08.0 | and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland. Born in 1837, a preacher's kid, Richard Cleveland, |
| 0:17.5 | his father, a Yale graduate, a Princeton Seminary graduate, his mother Anne, a German Quaker. |
| 0:24.1 | He grows up working hard, self-discipline, all of the templates associated with the Protestant |
| 0:32.1 | Reformation. At the same time, his family meets some hard times. His father doesn't earn |
| 0:39.0 | very much money and he travels from roost to roost. His health is broken at one point |
| 0:45.2 | and the money has to be cut back. Early on, Grover Cleveland had a sense of duty to his |
| 0:51.6 | family, to his mother, to his father, to his siblings. Was that true for the whole family |
| 0:56.6 | with these all-hardworking young people? To the extent that we have records that |
| 1:02.4 | does seem to be the case and it's a big family. Cleveland is the middle of nine children. |
| 1:07.2 | So, even Cleveland himself, interestingly enough, as a president of the United States, |
| 1:12.9 | we have a pretty thin record of what his childhood was like. And we see, as you suggest, these |
| 1:18.2 | glimpses of this deep sense of duty that's in him. But it was a pretty, a pretty religious |
| 1:27.8 | upbringing and they all seem to have had this deep work ethic, this deep sense of charity |
| 1:36.6 | as well. I mean, Cleveland ends up, his father dies by the time he's 16. Cleveland himself |
| 1:42.1 | has denied the ability to go to college because of this. But as he moves into his adult |
| 1:47.3 | life and starts making a decent salary, he's not keeping most of it. I mean, most of it |
| 1:51.9 | is actually being funneled back to the support of his widowed mother and the education of his |
| 1:57.8 | younger siblings. And that kind of character, as I said, to the extent that we glean it from |
| 2:02.6 | the other siblings, does seem to be sort of a constant throughout the family. And by the |
| 2:07.2 | way, interestingly enough, kind of a constant of future generations of Cleveland's. We sort |
| 2:11.4 | of see this in all of them. |
... |
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