Return to the “Gilded Age”, the golden age of the United States, made of industrial fortunes, corruption and political shenanigans at the end of the 19th centurye century, after the Civil War. If Donald Trump wins the November 5 presidential election, he will achieve the greatest political comeback in recent US history. Only one president managed to be elected a second time after being defeated: Grover Cleveland (1837-1908), elected in 1884, defeated in 1888 and elected again in 1892.
The man is a bit of the antithesis of Donald Trump: he was the first Democrat elected president after the Civil War, in an atmosphere of economic euphoria and businessism. Former mayor of Buffalo (New York State) and former governor of New York, this honest and austere man won with an anti-corruption program, opposed to high customs duties, against bimetallism (gold becoming rare, silver was used as a second currency but its use led to inflation) and against emerging American imperialism. He won against part of his own party, notably Tammany Hall, New York's clientelist political machine of Irish Catholics, who ruled the city, but with the support of Republicans tired of corruption, the Mugwumps.. He was attacked for having had an illegitimate child. His Republican opponent, James Blaine, had been implicated in railroad corruption scandals.
“We will come back in four years exactly”
Grover Cleveland opposed aid for Western farmers with a famous statement about the non-involvement of the federal state: “Even if the people support the government, the government should not support the people. » He was defeated in 1888 by the Republican Benjamin Harrison, the last American president to wear a beard: he lost the popular vote by 90,000 votes but won among the electors (233 against 168), winning in particular the States- keys to New York and Indiana.
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Harrison praised the « providence ». “Providence had nothing to do with it”railed Matthew Quay, Republican “boss” and senator from Pennsylvania, to the press. “He will never know how some of his supporters had to approach the doors of the penitentiary to make him president. » The White House website, which traces the biography of its tenants, confirms the affair : “Although Harrison had not made any political agreements, his supporters had made countless promises on his behalf. »
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