Can Trump Follow Cleveland’s Footsteps?

Both men shook up the status quo in Washington, although Cleveland’s version of “draining the swamp”—414 presidential vetoes in his first term combined with civil-service reforms intended to undermine the spoils system—was more prosaic than Mr. Trump’s.

While journalists may find the analogies too tempting to pass up, Donald Trump and Grover Cleveland played virtually opposite roles in the politics of their time. While both presided over parties in flux, their roles in those realignments were reversed. Mr. Trump grabbed the wheel of a Republican Party grounded in a philosophy of limited government and steered it toward nationalism and economic interventionism. Cleveland—the last Democratic president rooted in the party’s Jeffersonian tradition—clung desperately to classical liberalism as his party veered toward the populism of figures such as

William Jennings Bryan.

Mr. Trump is a revolutionary. Cleveland was a counterrevolutionary.

In fact, Cleveland won back the White House by defying his own voters. In 1891, as populists agitated to flood the country’s monetary system with silver—to inflate away the debt burden on Western and Southern Democrats—Cleveland issued an open letter warning of the policy’s potentially ruinous effects.

When Democrats gathered for their party’s 1892 convention in Chicago, the party men charged with selecting a presidential nominee overwhelmingly chose Cleveland in part because of his emphasis on economic stability. While irritating to the populists, it marked him as the party’s best bet to win a general election. It was a level of discretion that today’s Republican insiders can only dream of.

This is the central insight of 1892 for 2024: Presidents aren’t products simply of their times but also of the institutions constructed to select them. The democratization of presidential nominations began with the introduction of primaries in the early 20th century and has accelerated to the point where even modest tools of insider influence, like “superdelegates,” are in bad odor. This process means that Mr. Trump has no need to win over Republican elites. It also means that figures like Cleveland, willing to tell their parties hard truths in moments of passion, are unlikely to find a clear path to the White House anytime soon.

There is at least one lesson from Cleveland’s career that remains relevant for Mr. Trump. When the president was defeated in 1888, many of his supporters floated dubious assertions that electoral fraud had provided the margin of victory. Asked why he thought he had lost, Cleveland replied, “it was mainly because the other party had the most votes.”

Mr. Senik is author of “A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland,” out Sept. 20. He was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.