Amidst a presidential inauguration, the former presidents’ club had a historic shakeup in the new year. On January 9, the late Jimmy Carter, who set the record for the longest post-presidency in history, had a state funeral in Washington. Every living commander-in-chief attended. Eleven days later, the group assembled again for the inauguration. That day, Joe Biden became the newest, and oldest, member of the world’s most exclusive fraternity. But the climax was when President Donald Trump took the oath of office and was a former no more.
For those looking for a historical precedent for Trump’s second term, the obvious parallel is the comeback of President Grover Cleveland. Cleveland rose from mayor of Buffalo to commander in chief in three years. He’s the only other former president to serve two non-consecutive terms, from 1885 until 1889, and again from 1893 until 1897.
It’s an easy comparison to make. Beyond the shared interruption to their tenures in the White House, both Trump and Cleveland are New Yorkers. Both took on their parties’ establishments and won, building new political coalitions in the process. In their time, both of their parties disputed election results, the Democrats in 1876 and the Republicans in 2020. Neither man ever won the majority of the popular vote, though Trump won the plurality in 2024.
Both married women who were popular icons in their day – Cleveland entered office a bachelor, only to wed the beautiful Francis Folsom, age 21, shortly after her college graduation, and her likeness adorned products and advertisements throughout the country. Both returned to Washington pledging to clean up the town, be it ‘draining the swamp’ or, for Cleveland, literally tidying up the White House. When he and Francis flipped on the newly installed light switches in the Executive Mansion, they found that Benjamin Harrison had left it in a state of disrepair, with cobwebs, roaches and rats all around.
But such comparisons only go so far. Where Cleveland was understated, Trump’s personality, from reality television to business to social media to the White House, is larger than life. Cleveland grew up the son of a poor rural preacher; Trump was a successful businessman in New York City. The Democratic Party moved away from Cleveland when it nominated the populist William Jennings Bryan, for whom Cleveland didn’t even vote. Trump has reshaped the Republican Party; his endorsement is coveted.
And whereas Cleveland hadn’t initially planned on mounting a comeback – that was always Francis’s idea – shortly after he left office the first time, then-former president Trump clearly intended to run for his old office again, announced his third bid for the White House in 2022, was the clear GOP frontrunner from the beginning, and campaigned vigorously.
Perhaps most importantly, Trump doesn’t think he’s the second coming of Cleveland’s second coming. Instead, he compares himself to Cleveland’s second successor, President William McKinley. During his inaugural address, Trump invoked McKinley repeatedly, promising to restore the 25th president’s name to the highest peak in North America.
And the comparison goes beyond admiration – like McKinley and, unlike Cleveland, Trump favors tariffs. Trump and McKinley prioritized the strength of the dollar. They picked two of the youngest vice presidents in history, Theodore Roosevelt and JD Vance. And they both made territorial expansion a part of the national conversation, be it Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam then because of the Spanish-American War, or Greenland today.
