Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character.(Review)

Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character By Alyn Brodsky St. Martin's Press, 456 pages, $35

In our historically illiterate age, we remember the vices of Presidents while ignoring their virtues. So most of us, when thinking about Grover Cleveland, remember that he was a very fat man who had an illegitimate son. But few people, including devotees of the presidency, know what Cleveland did while in office or why he was important.

In his latest book, biographer Alyn Brodsky tries--and mostly succeeds--in restoring Cleveland's reputation. Brodsky, a former newspaper reporter and book editor, has a breezy style. He should have resisted the temptation to interrupt his story with irrelevant comparisons to our own times. But aside from these unnecessary efforts to make his story contemporary, Brodsky does a good job in explaining Cleveland's life to his readers--and in explaining why Cleveland was a champion of limited (and honest) government.

Until he was 44, Cleveland's political career was limited to Buffalo, where he served as sheriff and as assistant district attorney. But in 1881, corruption in the city's Republican machine led to Cleveland's election as Buffalo mayor. He proved to be honest, incorruptible, and a foe of patronage, vetoing so many pork-barrel bills that he became known as "His Obstinacy." A year later, he conquered a divided and exhausted Republican Party to become governor of New York.

Two years after that, Cleveland became the first Democratic President in 24 years. But to become President, Cleveland had to overcome what Brodsky calls "an exchange of political filth." A Buffalo widow named Maria Halpin claimed that Cleveland was the father of her ten-year-old son. Cleveland admitted having an affair with Halpin, and to paying fees to an orphanage for the boy after Halpin was committed to an insane asylum. But there's no firm evidence that Cleveland was the father, since Halpin had liaisons with most of the partners in Cleveland's law firm.

Democrats fought back, claiming that the Republican candidate, James G. Blaine, had married his wife a mere three months before the birth of their first child. (Blaine responded, without evidence, that he had married his wife twice--the first time nine months before their child was born.) But Blaine's candidacy was doomed when a supporter slurred the Democrats as the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion"--in other words, boozers, Irish Catholics, and unrepentant Confederates. Outrage over this statement helped Cleveland win a narrow victory.

It should be noted that until Woodrow Wilson reversed the political polarities of the two parties, the Democrats were the small-government party, championing ...