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[Abridged] Presidential Histories - 24.A.) Grover Cleveland's reelection revenge, an interview with Mark Summers
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24.A.) Grover Cleveland's reelection revenge, an interview with Mark Summers

[Abridged] Presidential Histories

12/20/21

46m

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In 1892, the rich were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer, and a former president decided to run again against the rival who had defeated him. How similar is the Gilded Age to our modern political and economic moment?
Join me as I talk with University Kentucky professor Mark Summers, a historian of the Gilded Age and author of numerous books, including The Era of Good Stealings; The Gilded Age; and Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion: The Making of a President, 1884, to discuss how Grover Cleveland won his revenge campaign against Benjamin Harrison and whether we currently live in another Gilded Age.


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Previous Episode

On the final day of Grover Cleveland's first term in office, his wife turned to a member of the white house staff and said. "I want you to take good care of all the furniture and ornaments in the house, for I want everything just as it is now when we come back again. We are coming back. Just four years from today."
Four years later, she was right.
Follow along as Cleveland graciously accepts defeat in 1888 only to become convinced he must run again, wins the white house, and them stumbles into one of the greatest economic depressions of the 19th century. By the time he leaves office, the party will be done with him and his brand of small-government politics forever.
Bibliography
1. Grover Cleveland – Henry F. Graff
2. Benjamin Harrison – Charles W. Calhoun
3. The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century – Scott Miller
4. T.R. the last Romantic – H.R. Brands
5. The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made – Patricia O’Toole

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Next Episode

What was Grover Cleveland hiding in 1893? When the famously honest president was diagnosed with mouth cancer, he decided to keep it from the public at all costs - even if that meant hatching a hair-brained scheme to surgically remove the tumor on a yacht at sea.
Join me as I talk with award-winning journalist and author Matthew Algeo, author of All This Marvelous Potential: Robert Kennedy’s 1968 Tour of Appalachia; Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip; and The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth, to discuss how far Cleveland was willing to go to take his secret to the grave.

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