Grover Cleveland's grandson on Trump, his own 'weird' take on history

WASHINGTON — When he was growing up, the portrait that hung on the living room wall of his childhood home in Baltimore reminded George Cleveland that his grandfather had been a truly big deal.

Cleveland never knew his father’s father. He died almost half a century before Cleveland was born. But when your grandfather was President of the United States, history fills in the gaps. And when your grandfather earned a special footnote in presidential history, Danger! makes it a popular quiz question.

A: The only U.S. president to serve non-consecutive terms.

Q: Who is Grover Cleveland?

George Cleveland, a self-employed consultant living in rural Tamworth, New Hampshire, is the grandson of Grover Cleveland. Yes, The Grover Cleveland. The one who for 132 years held the distinction of being the only president to leave office in defeat and return four years later. The one whose second term ended almost a century and a half ago, in 1897.

The automobile and the telephone were still new inventions when Grover Cleveland occupied the White House. The fact that he has a living grandson makes George Cleveland a bit of an oddity in his own right.

“It’s kind of weird and it’s kind of fun and it gives you an interesting perspective on history,” Cleveland said.

From next week, however, history – and Danger! Questions – needs to be rewritten.

Donald Trump, who lost the presidency to Joe Biden four years ago, returns to the White House on Monday to begin a second term that will earn him a place in the history books alongside Grover Cleveland as the only president who completed terms of office that were not completed – backwards.

“Someone will break it at some point.”

People keep asking George Cleveland if it bothers him that Trump is limiting his grandfather’s place in history.

No, that’s not him.

“It’s like any other record,” he said. “Someone will break it at some point.”

His thoughts on Trump? “I don’t have any,” he insisted.

Did he vote for Trump? “They have curtains and voting booths for a reason,” he replied, a diplomatic response worthy of a seasoned politician.

Then finally a confession: “I don’t think I put a check mark next to his name.”

Where can you watch the inauguration:View the broadcast schedules of the major television networks

For most of his life, George Cleveland’s family didn’t make much of a fuss about their famous ancestor. When he was young, George Cleveland, now 72, thought of his grandfather as an almost mythical figure – someone he had heard and read about but who didn’t seem real.

He was.

Cleveland’s father is Richard Cleveland, the fourth of five children of Grover Cleveland and his wife Frances Folsom. Grover Cleveland was a latecomer when it came to starting a family. He was a bachelor when he became president and was 49 years old when he and Frances married in the Blue Room of the White House. He was 60 years old and had just completed his second term when Richard arrived in 1897. Richard, in turn, was 54 years old when George Cleveland was born.

George Cleveland was probably 9 or 10 years old before he began to understand the meaning of the tall man with the bushy mustache who stared down at him from the painting in the living room, now in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. The same man whose face appears on the $1,000 bill. (He doesn’t have many of them, the grandson jokes.)

His father took him to a birthday party at his grandfather’s gravesite in Princeton, New Jersey. Young George was fascinated by the pageantry surrounding the event – the uniformed soldiers, their long rifles, their sharp salutes.

“That was very, very impressive for me,” he remembers. “I kind of realized there was something big there.”

George Cleveland, whose older sister, Frances Cleveland, lives in France, gained insight into his grandfather’s life in the White House through memorabilia such as the portrait in his family home and a few grainy black-and-white photos.

In one, a Christmas tree decorated with tinsel and light bulbs stands in the Oval Room on the second floor of the presidential palace. Among them are several dolls that, George Cleveland laughs, would be considered somewhat creepy by today’s standards.

In the 1990s, George Cleveland decided to delve deeper into his grandfather’s story and even began performing historical interpretations and character recreations – often dressed in period costumes – of Grover Cleveland and other historical figures.

Trump vs. Cleveland: Differences between night and day

With Trump returning to the White House, some people are naturally looking for parallels between him and Grover Cleveland. George Cleveland only sees differences – “probably night and day differences,” he said.

“Grover was hyperfocused and a workaholic,” he said.

Exclusive:In an interview with USA TODAY, Biden reveals his biggest regret and the compliment Trump gave him

Grover Cleveland (22nd^nd and 24^Th President) was a fiscally conservative Democrat. But if he were alive today, “he would probably be a libertarian,” George Cleveland said. “I don’t think that will apply to Trump.”

Trump (45^Th and 47^Th President) fills his Cabinet and government with loyal supporters, but “Grover vehemently opposed any kind of patronage,” his grandson said. “Grover never got into it. He would always choose the most qualified person. That angered a lot of people in Congress”—and contributed to his defeat in 1888.

Trump, like the powerful economic executive he was before he became president, delegates authority and doesn’t bother with details. But Grover Cleveland often did unpleasant tasks himself. As sheriff in Erie County, New York, he personally pulled the lever to hang two men rather than delegate the task to one of his deputies.

“He didn’t believe that an underling should do the dirty work,” George Cleveland said. “He did not shirk responsibility.”

Unlike Trump, who hates to accept defeat and rarely admits he made a mistake, “Grover Cleveland could admit when he was wrong,” his grandson said.

Opening:Which states will fly flags at Trump’s inauguration?

“A celebratory manifestation of democracy”

Not everything in Grover Cleveland’s background was flattering.

During his first term, he expanded the Chinese Exclusion Act by signing a law banning Chinese immigrants returning to their home country from returning to the United States.

The law was “one of the most terrible things we have ever done,” George Cleveland said, contradicting his grandfather’s views on Hawaii, where the monarchy had been overthrown by a coup led by American businessmen and lawyers shortly before his first semester began .

When he took office, Grover Cleveland opposed the annexation of Hawaii and supported the return of the non-white monarchy, which he believed had been illegally overthrown.

“I would like to think that if Grover had lived longer, he would have mitigated the Chinese Exclusion Act,” said George Cleveland.

When Trump takes the oath of office on Monday, George Cleveland will be watching from home – assuming his internet is working. (In rural New Hampshire, that’s sometimes not the case.) He has personally attended two presidential inaugurations — Bill Clinton’s first in 1993 and Barack Obama’s first in 2009, which he called “one of the most spectacular experiences of my life “keeps in mind.

Grover Cleveland’s grandson on Trump, his own ‘weird’ take on history

ByAmelia Journalton

By Amelia Journalton

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