Grover Cleveland didn’t lie about his sex scandal
It’s taken a while for people to start comparing Donald Trump to Grover Cleveland. Cleveland, of course, was the only man to achieve Trump’s current political goal — win the presidency, lose the reelection and then win it again the third time around.
Both championed tax cuts and fiscal restraint, although only Cleveland actually tried to balance the budget. And both had sex scandals — which we’re going to compare now just because it’s sort of fun.
Cleveland, unlike Trump, was unmarried. He’d never been divorced. And the closest thing he had to a sex scandal before his presidential nomination was a bunch of stories about jolly drinking parties he’d had with his male friends at neighborhood beer gardens.
Trump had — well really there’s no point in discussing that, is there? This week in court we’ve been dragged through his entanglement with Stormy Daniels (“He said, ‘Oh it was great. Let’s get together again, honey bunch,’” Daniels testified on Tuesday. “I just wanted to leave.”), which is only interesting now that we’re arguing about whether he illegally disguised the money he used to silence her as legal expenses.
Cleveland, a Democrat, was nominated for president as a virtuous bachelor. Then, a story arose about a possible son. There was definitely a child, born to an unmarried woman with a drinking problem. Cleveland looked after the child and eventually arranged to have him adopted.
It took some of the Republican tabloids of the era about two minutes to figure out a spin. “Ma, Ma, where’s my pa?” they roared. (To which the Democrats later replied, “gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha!”)
Cleveland told his advisers to “tell the truth” in the face of the scandal. This approach succeeded, possibly because many people at the time assumed the child in question was actually the secret offspring of Cleveland’s longtime friend, Oscar Folsom, who had died not long before in a carriage accident. His daughter, a beautiful college student named Frances, was the secret love of Cleveland’s life.
Jump to the end here: The voters decided they were more interested in Cleveland’s super-honesty in public matters than secret offspring. He married Frances in the nation’s first White House wedding. And they lived devotedly until Grover died.
Not going to make you try to compare this with the Trump saga because really, I know you’ve already gotten there. Just a story about sex and the White House that might make you feel a little less depressed about what you’re reading today.
© 2024 The New York Times Company
