America's Creepiest President

Last week, I visited the First Ladies National Historic Site in Canton, Ohio. It was OK, though it has a weird public-private partnership where the private side was not exactly great. Anyway, they had descriptions of each first lady. Naturally, I was attracted to the Gilded Age (Jackie Kennedy? Who cares? Now Lucy Webb Hayes, that's interesting!!!). Anyway, I was looking at the biography for Frances Folsom Cleveland. And I found it deeply, deeply disturbing.

Grover Cleveland had a pretty risque sexual reputation for the Victorian Age. He was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock, a child he supported financially. During the 1884, Republicans chanted "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?" to make fun of Cleveland. When Cleveland became the first Democrat to win the presidency since James Buchanan, his supporters responded by saying "Off to the White House, ha ha ha."*

Anyway, Cleveland was a good friend with a man named Oscar Folsom. Just as they became friends, Folsom had a daughter named Francis. Cleveland was 27 years old at the time. 11 years later, Folsom died in a buggy accident. He did not leave a will. A court named Cleveland as Folsom's guardian.

At the time, Grover Cleveland was 38 years old. Francis Folsom was 11.

One might say that Cleveland was being a pretty nice guy. He was wealthy and well-connected. One might think he'd be a father figure to Francis and set her up for a prosperous lifestyle.

However, it didn't work how one would might expect. Cleveland took care of Francis and watched her grew up. Watched her grow through puberty and from a small girl into an attractive young woman.

Were I in that situation, I might be really proud of the young woman.

Cleveland on the other hand decided she was sexually attractive and married her in 1886. Cleveland was 47. Frances was 21.

Grover and Frances ended up having 5 children.**

Amazingly, no one seemed to care about this at the time. The public was fascinated by the story, but as far as I could tell, the reaction to his marriage was pretty positive.

And virtually no one has ever mentioned this marriage ever since.

Am I the only one who finds this story disturbing? Can you mention a current president marrying a woman 28 years younger, a woman he had taken care of since she was 11?

Also, if Jonah Goldberg knew this story, he'd use it as evidence that all Democrats are sexual deviants. 

*Gilded Age political slogans seem incredibly simplistic to me. Really, the Republicans couldn't attack Cleveland with a better chant?

**Amazingly, Cleveland was so much older than his wife that his  youngest son died in 1995. That means that Grover Cleveland's son was still alive until I was a senior in college.

Historical Image of the Day

Editorial cartoon satirizing Susan B. Anthony attacking Grover Cleveland for not supporting women's suffrage. I don't have a date, but obviously it was during one of Cleveland's 2 non-consecutive terms.

The New Grover Cleveland, The New Gilded Age

Lots of great commentary out there on Obama embracing Hooverite policies to deal with the recession, particularly Noon decrying Obama following the advice of Hans Morganthau. But I really want to focus on Eric's comparison of Obama to Grover Cleveland, a comparison I also made in my long post on Brown's election last Tuesday night.

Eric uses this image and also quotes Richard Hofstadter on Cleveland, who wrote

a taxpayer’s dream, the ideal bourgeois statesman for his time: out of heartfelt conviction he gave to the interests what many a lesser politician might have sold them for a price. He was the flower of American political culture in the Gilded Age.

Maybe Obama is the next Grover Cleveland. I increasingly believe it. Like in the 1880s, we have a Democratic party that has totally bought into Republican rhetoric and a president who is increasingly facilitating whatever corporations want. It's pretty bad when the person you thought might be the next Lyndon Johnson turns out to be the next Grover Cleveland.

During the Democratic primary, I was a mild Obama supporter (after Edwards fell away) and once told my students when they asked who I voted for that I went for Obama because I was ready to be disappointed by someone new. Indeed, that disappointment is setting in, particularly in the last week. At this point, I'm beginning to wish Hillary had won. If the Democrats are going to sell out, at least Hillary would be going about it competently.

In a related post, Steve asks whether the new 2 party system is the old Republican Party (now called the Democrats) and the Tea Party Party. I wonder. While the nation's political tendencies aren't really moving to the right (and the preferences of young people for libertarian social policies suggests a long-term shift to the left), both political parties continue their 35 year long move to the right. How long can this be sustainable? Progressives thought we had put a stop to this when we elected Obama, but we were clearly too optimistic. I'm not quite as pessimistic as Steve however, because you have a large and increasingly active base of the Democratic Party very angry about all of this. A continued Democratic rightward lean isn't tenable because they won't win elections this way.

Under different circumstances, with active labor unions able to provide the votes to make this happen, I almost wonder if now might have been a good time to do what England did when the Labor Party outflanked the Liberals as the 2nd major party in that country. Eventually, it seems the Democrats will move so far to the right that most of their members won't be willing to go with them. Of course, the long historical failure of 3rd party movements in this country make it very difficult to see any alternative except for dropping out of the system entirely.