The Ghost of Grover Cleveland Hovers over 2020, and 2024

If Democrats lose one of the two US Senate races in Georgia on January 5, 2021, it will leave : “Mr. Biden as the first Democratic president since Grover Cleveland in 1885 to take office without Democrats in control of both congressional chambers….NEW YORK TIMES”.

Suddenly, in 2020, the ghost of President Grover Cleveland is loitering over America’s future, bizarre.

Mr. Cleveland was the 22^ndand 24^thPresident of the United States. He won the Presidency in the election of 1884, lost it in the election of 1888 and won it again in the election of 1892.

Grover Cleveland is an interesting case of Americana;  the son of a Presbyterian minister, he had a checkered personal life; yet he kept the devotion of his supporters over three election cycles.

Beginning in 1868, until Teddy Roosevelt in 1901, every American President had served the Republic in the Homeric conflict of that age, the American Civil War. All save Cleveland.

He did not exactly dodge the conflict; he did not have bone spurs. He did hire a substitute to go fight the war against slavery in his stead. In 1863, with all the volunteers used up as cannon fodder, Congress passed the Conscription Act of 1863. It required service of all able bodied men if called to the colors OR…one could hire a substitute.

Cleveland  hired a recently arrived Polish immigrant, George Benninsky, 32, to fight in his stead. He paid the immigrant $150 ( roughly $3200 in 2020 dollars) to go in harm’s way for him. Being a Democrat,Cleveland had a knack for exploiting migrants, the going rate for hiring substitutes to do your service was $300.00.

Benninsky survived the war.

Cleveland was a bachelor when he entered the White House; but he had been busy. As a young lawyer, he had fathered an illegitimate child by Maria Halpin.

There were records that Cleveland, by bank drafts had paid child support for Oscar Folsom Cleveland.

Ms. Halpin swore,in an affidavit, which the media published ,that until she met the bachelor Presbyterian, her“life was pure and spotless", and "there is not, and never was, a doubt as to the paternity of our child, and the attempt of Grover Cleveland, or his friends, to couple the name of anyone else, with that boy, for that purpose is simply infamous and false.”

 Interestingly, President Trump is an avowed Presbyterian.

The Bachelor President had a ward, a nubile young thing, who called him Uncle Grover. She was the daughter of his late, great friend Oscar Folsom. Frances Folsom would come visit her Uncle Grover while he was in the White House, come visiting as a comely coed.

It was doing that visit that Presbyterian Cleveland remembered that the founder of the Presbyterian Church, James Know, had married a 17 year old girl when he was 54.

Uncle Grover cast off the cloak of paternal platonic benevolence and started courting coed Frances.

On June 2, 1886, 49 year old President Cleveland married 21 year old Frances Folsom in the Blue Room of the White House.

Some contemporaries quibbled about the match, since Cleveland had been the executor of Frances’ father’s estate, and had supervised her upbringing. Some modern pop psychologists might even think that Cleveland had groomed the young Frances.

She was, and still is the youngest First lady in American History.

Cleveland lost the election of 1888, but won again in 1892.

It is obvious that 19^thCentury Americans, Victorians, did not care about Cleveland’s personal peccadilloes, or his lack of wartime service. They hungered for leadership, Grover Cleveland leadership.

Joe Biden is the embodiment of the ancien regime; he is the return of the Bourbons after the Napoleonic Era. He is America’s KING LEAR, America’s Henry VI, America’s Stanley Baldwin, and America’s Pierre Pflimlin.

The Dickensian character MR. BUMBLE( OLIVER TWIST) gave the world, the word: Bumbledom: “ the meddlesome self-importance of the petty bureaucrat.”

As a Senator and Vice President, even as a Presidential candidate, Joe Biden has been the personification of BUMBLEDOM in politicians.

President Joe Biden will give English the word: BIDENDOM-“ the smug ,clueless,  self importance of an over matched President.”

Joe Biden does not have the character nor wit, nor street smarts, nor vision nor instinct to guide America through conflicts with four existential threats: Communist China, Mass Migration, Drug Cartels and Sunni hegemonists.

Joe Biden will give the Republic four years of pitiful Presidency; after four years being awash in pity, Trump voters will arise, like the DEAD MEN OF DUNHARROW, to avenge the 2020 defeat.

As for President Trump, there is no point in being CORIOLANUS when one can be Grover Cleveland.

Grover and Frances Cleveland