Matthew Algeo: In 2012, the tea party wants ... another Grover Cleveland

Matthew Algeo is the author of “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.”

Washington has a monument. Jefferson and Lincoln have memorials. Grover Cleveland? Well, there’s a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike named after him (it’s between exits 11 and 12 northbound). Otherwise, Cleveland is best remembered – if he’s remembered at all – for being the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms.

But recently Cleveland seems to be making something of a comeback. He is frequently cited by conservatives and libertarians alike as one of our great presidents. Republican Congressman Ron Paul, who is sometimes called the “intellectual grandfather” of the tea party movement, keeps a picture of Cleveland in his office. “To me he has always been a great president,” says Mr. Paul, noting that Cleveland was “one of the last presidents who had some concern about limited government.”...

In his second inaugural Cleveland declared, “The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government its functions do not include the support of the people.” But his aversion to paternalism sometimes came across as callous, if not cruel. When a hurricane devastated the Southeast in the summer of 1893, leaving thousands homeless and starving, Cleveland categorically rejected pleas for help. His secretary of war, Dan Lamont, explained that it would be unconstitutional for the government to provide direct aid – though he did offer to lend some spare tents to the homeless. It was a principled position, but it certainly did nothing to endear Cleveland to a population already wrestling with a crippling recession (now known as the Panic of 1893)....

Which probably explains why Grover Cleveland’s most visible memorial is a turnpike rest stop.