Donald Trump is attempting to accomplish something that only one other president in history has accomplished before: return to the White House after losing the presidential election four years earlier.
The only president to ever resign from office and then make a comeback was over 100 years ago with the re-election of President Grover Cleveland.
But the similarities between Trump and Cleveland’s efforts to secure a second term in the White House end there.
The circumstances surrounding Trump’s campaign to return to the White House have virtually nothing to do with the last and only time a president managed to do so.
Donald Trump is trying to return to the White House after losing the 2020 election. The only president to return to the presidency after a loss and a four-year absence was President Grover Cleveland
Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th President of the United States.
He was first elected in 1884, the first Democrat to become president after the Civil War, but lost the 1888 election to Benjamin Harrison.
Four years later, in 1892, Cleveland again won the Democratic nomination and returned to the White House for a second term, from 1893 to 1897.
Since then, several former presidents have tried to return, but so far they have not succeeded.
“When Cleveland left the White House and lost, he had no intention of coming back,” said biographer Troy Senik, author of “A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland.”
“The first two, two and a half years after he was out, nobody really thought he was coming back. He didn’t think he was coming back,” Senik said.
Cleveland was actually quite pleased that he had one good term and that his fellow countryman had made his judgment, Senik said.
“He was a president who was not exactly ambitious.”
When Cleveland lost the 1888 election, it was a close race. Cleveland ultimately won the census, despite losing the Electoral College.
President Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms in the White House. He is the only president to do so. He was first elected in 1884, but lost his re-election bid in 1888. He then won the 1892 election to serve another four-year term
When he lost the 1888 election, Cleveland did not contest the results, nor did he immediately indicate that he would seek another term.
At the time, some partisan extremists claimed that the election was close. These claims were untrue, but were perhaps more plausible then than they are now.
“There’s a real contrast in the way these allegations have been handled, because Cleveland was asked at one point by the press, ‘What do you think happened? Why do you think you lost?’ And he said, ‘Because the other side got the most votes,'” Senik said. “He didn’t want to entertain any of those theories.”
It’s not clear what Cleveland was really thinking, but according to his biographer, his main concern was not to “stir the country” by talking about a charged election.
What also distinguishes Trump and Cleveland is that Cleveland marked the end for a certain type of Democrat, while Trump leads a new Republican Party.
What ultimately drew Cleveland back into politics was his view that the Democratic Party was moving in a more populist direction and away from Cleveland’s vision of limited government.
Thanks to his re-election, Cleveland was able to delay the shift for about four years.
“He’s a real contrast to Trump in the sense that he’s really a counterrevolutionary. He’s trying to stop this populist resurgence in his party, while Trump is at the helm of the Republican Party.”
Cleveland also worried about the character of the people who might be the Democratic nominee if he did not do so in 1892.
President Cleveland ran for re-election in 1892, focusing almost exclusively on the issue of tariffs
The 1892 nomination process was very different from the 2024 one, as it took place well before the party primaries.
Cleveland’s return was largely embraced by party leaders, who made the decisions about who would be the nominee and did not want the party to take a populist turn. The same was not true of party members.
He was known for his honesty and integrity, which allowed the party to resolve their differences and nominate him.
If there had been a primary, as there is now, and voters could cast their ballots, Senik does not believe Cleveland would have been the nominee.
When Cleveland lost in 1888, it was probably because he had an edge with the voters.
Specific to that period in the history of this election, his re-election was based on a single issue: lowering tariffs, which sowed divisions within his party.
When he ran again in 1892, after Republican President Benjamin Harrison had taken office and Congress was controlled by Republicans, tariffs had risen and people were feeling the economic pain, so his position gave him an advantage he had not had in the previous election.
In addition to Cleveland, several other presidents, including Grant, Roosevelt, and Hoover, ran for re-election after leaving office, but none were successful.
Trump’s bid for re-election and Cleveland’s bid are more similar because voters in 2024 may be fatigued by a Trump-Biden rematch, just as they were in 1892, when Cleveland and Harrison were the candidates for a second time.
“Everybody was bored,” Senik said of 1892. “They just thought it was so boring to have the same two guys perform over and over again.”
In the end, it was a sleepy election: Cleveland was ill much of the time, suffering from gout. Harrison’s wife was dying.
Overall, they didn’t really campaign and the country paid little attention to them.
In addition to Cleveland, several former presidents have tried to return to the White House after leaving office, including Presidents Ulysses Grant, Herbert Hoover, Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, and Teddy Roosevelt. None won.
If he wins in November, Trump will become only the second president to serve non-consecutive terms.