Research Paper on U.S. Presidential Elections: Transforming the American Dream

Introduction

Regular elections in the United States, characterized by sometimes heated but issue-based campaigns for the presidential vote, have been vital in transforming the social, political, and economic system o the country. Virtually all the forty-five presidential elections in the US have resulted in new administrations whose main aim has been to make policy changes where they deem necessary for the attainment of the American Dream. The campaign, election, and subsequent administration of President Grover Cleveland as the 22nd and 24th president of the united states is one such electoral process that led to various changes not only in party politics but also in the general governance of the country.

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Brief Background of Grover Cleveland

President Grover Cleveland was born in 1837and died in1908 after an illustrious career in private and public service. He became the mayor of Buffalo in 1882 on a democratic party ticket based on his campaign agenda of reforming the administration systems in the city. He delivered on this promise and oversaw a true reformation of Buffalo, which then won him accolades and public goodwill. Due to this astounding track record, Cleveland vied for and won New York state governorship, serving his term between 1883 and 1885 before being elected for the first time as the 22nd President of the United States of America. Part of his legacy in the country's history is the fact that he was the first president to have ever served two non-consecutive terms.

Positives in the Campaign, Election, and Administration of President Grover Cleveland

Cleveland reinvented the Jacksonian party organization by creating a presidency who was adequately in charge of his administration while at the same time balancing it with party policy positions and expectations of the electorate. The Jacksonian Party organization had focused on distributing presidential candidate nomination power to the subnational party organizations gathered in national conventions (Klinghard, 2005). The Jacksonian approach placed subnational party leaders at the center of nominations of presidents, thus encouraging building nominating coalitions. The structure of appointment distributed federal patronage, which undercut the capacity of presidents to have on a full leadership role in their parties both in the government and citizenry. The subnational party organizations shaped national campaigns at their regional levels, thus frustrating the powers of the national party leadership to breakdown electoral manifestos or victories into mandates for the presidential administration in the party structure. Cleveland tweaked this provision by pioneering a system that enabled the presidency to articulate policy issues outside political party context but with the hindsight of what such parties stood for. For instance, Cleveland sought to make the Democratic party commitments' clamor for tariff reforms clearer to the citizens (Klinghard, 2005). By, making the party's pledges clearer to the electorate served as a strategy to make members of his party act towards achieving them. This was contrary to the Jacksonian party organization, which limited the President's leadership of the party. According to Cleveland, a president's role is to stop the excesses of Congress by blocking legislative excesses. This stand on the part of a presidency increased his popularity in the first term.

President Cleveland set up his legacy on cutting government spending and using veto power often when the situation demanded it. This was the same approach that his predecessor, Chester Arthur hence providing a seamless transition to another era of government frugality under a different regime (Walters, 2012). His political appointments were also based on an individuals' competencies rather than dictated by parochial party political influence. The President invoked his veto to reduce government expenditure more than any other president before him. For instance, he nullified the arbitrary and irregular grants to around eighty million acres of public land in the western part of the united States. Using his veto, President Cleveland stopped the issuance of irregular pension bills in the tune of billions of dollars to underserving veterans of the Civil War (Walters, 2012). His blatant rejection of pilferage of public resources and deliberate efforts at stopping corruption increased President Cleveland's approval ratings. He pioneered the regulation of commerce in the country through championing the formation of the passage and enactment of the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act, which culminated in the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission (Wilson, 2013). He also showed a commitment to the welfare of the native Americans through overseeing the passage of the Dawes General Allotment Act (1887), which allowed the individual tribe members to be allocated Native American reservation land.

Just like he exhibited courage and honesty in facilitating domestic policy, Cleveland also escalated it to the international scale through balanced foreign policy. In a demonstration of restraint from expansionism, Cleveland withdrew a treaty that would have otherwise led to the annexation of Hawaii after the deposition of the Hawaiian leader through an American instigated coup (Pearce, 1974). The President also cease from giving in to pressure to intervene for Cuban belligerents fighting for the reclamation of independence form their colonial master, Spain. Nonetheless, he tactfully asserted the American status at the international level. For instance, he invoked the Monroe Doctrine to compel Britain into accepting to resolve a boundary dispute between Guyana and Venezuela (Robertson, 1920).

Negatives in the Campaign, Election, and Administration of President Grover Cleveland

In the 1884 presidential campaign, Cleveland, the realization that Cleveland had a child out o wedlock, betrayed those who thought he was best fit for the position since his republican opponent, Senator James G. Blaine, had financial scandals. In a sheer bid to sully the image of Cleveland, the republicans had charged him with having a child with another woman over ten years before even though it was not conclusive that he was the true father (Huck, 2017). In a country that valued a sense of parental responsibility and the institution of marriage, the mere portrayal of Cleveland as being involved in clandestine sexual activities outside marriage cast aspersions on his moral standing. In a spate of ridicule during the campaigns, the Republicans would often make the pronouncements "Ma, ma, where's my pa?." In his response to the accusations of having a child out of wedlock, Cleveland expressed a sense of altruism and responsibility by admitting responsibility of fathering the child (Huck, 2017). Though this reaction from Cleveland served to show his boldness and honesty to his past, it badly dented his image.

Cleveland demonstrated naivety in responding to one of the most severe US economic depressions. According to him, the economic downturn as a result of the 1890's Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which allowed the purchase of 4.5 million dollars' worth of silver every month (Hoffman, 2002). He posited that the acquisition led to fiscal instability by undermining confidence in the US dollar. As a response, he asked the Congress to convene a special sitting albeit with the rejection from the members of the democratic party from Southern and Western states. He naively forced the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, but this intervention had no favorable feedback as the depression deepened (Timberlake, 1978). His poor fiscal choices also manifested in the decision to negotiate with syndicate bankers to purchase the government gold bonds overseas as a way to save the plummeting gold quality. Although the gold sale saved the government from an imminent loss, the strategy had adverse political implications as it triggered conflict with some of his avid supporters.

The President also expressed the imbalanced and inconsistent perspective of social circumstances. For instance, he expressed sympathy with exploitative capitalists at the expense of the ordinary workers, which then cast him as not pro-people. In response to the 1894 Pullman Strike, Cleveland ordered federal troops to the railroad car facility to quell the protesters instead of addressing the root cause of such agitations (Bassett, 1997). In another show of inconsistency in social perspectives, Cleveland rejected discrimination against Chinese immigrants living in the Western states but failed to support initiatives supporting the attainment of equality for African Americans, and women suffrage rights (Wilson, 2010). He also advocated for the assimilation of the Native Americans implying a deliberate attempt to erode their traditions, cultures, and unique heritage.

Conclusion

President Grover Cleveland's legacy remains deeply ingrained in American history for being at the forefront of demonstrating frugality in the government sending, tweaking the Jacksonian party organization to redeem administrative control of the party, and ceasing from controversial international polices. Nonetheless, his campaigns and tenure were tainted with incidences such as accusation for having a child out of marriage, sometimes unsound fiscal interventions, and indifference on fostering equality for all Americans irrespective of their racial backgrounds.

References

Bassett, J. (1997). The Pullman strike of 1894. OAH Magazine of History, 11(2), 34-41. https://watermark.silverchair.com/11-2-34.

Hoffman, K. S. (2002). " Going Public" in the Nineteenth Century: Grover Cleveland's Repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 5(1), 57-77.

Huck, C. (2017). The Halpin Affair: How Cleveland went from Scandal to Success. Wittenberg History Journal, 3. https://www.wittenberg.edu/sites/default/files/media/history/2017HistoryJournal.pdf#page=9

Klinghard, D. P. (2005). Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and the emergence of the President as party leader. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 35(4), 736-760. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5705.2005.00274.x.

Pearce, G. F. (1974). Assessing Public Opinion: Editorial Comment and the Annexation of Hawaii: A Case Study. Pacific Historical Review, 43(3), 324-341. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3638260.

Robertson, W. S. (1920). Hispanic American Appreciations of the Monroe Doctrine. Hispanic American Historical Review, 1-16. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2505840

Timberlake, R. H. (1978). Repeal of Silver Monetization in the Late Nineteenth Century. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 10(1), 27-45. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1991470.pdf?casa_token=HhrXPA0Scn0AAAAA:ToEPtBjIOL2_pZM20UyByEBob_tdjZrL1ObBhUXGcDzGZQJ_04x1Jx0ljJ0W4rE7qkagxyqi3qK1sHq-MrZB9LRZ_ZKi8ItDYfe9DofzEotVimLR_1av

Walters, R. S. (2012). The Last Jeffersonian: Grover Cleveland and the Path to Restoring the Republic. WestBow Press. https://books.google.dk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=OWn6FKjXEe4C&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=President+Grover+Cleveland+set+up+his+legacy+on+cutting+government+spending+&ots=D5jOvd26Wl&sig=nSrGlj69ETZidN8U2D5OyFOPqL4&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Wilson, S. E. (2010). Prejudice & policy racial discrimination in the union army disabilitypension system, 1865-1906. American journal of public health, 100(S1), S56-S65. Doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2009.172759

Wilson, W. W. (2013). Introduction: The interstate commerce act of 1887. Review of Industrial Organization, 43(1-2), 3-6. DOI 10.1007/s11151-013-9395-7.