Trump and Cleveland: 2 US Presidents Who Broke the Mold With Non-Consecutive Terms

New York: While several U.S. presidents have served multiple terms, Donald Trump joins the list as both the 45th and 47th president. He is only the second to have a four-year gap between terms. 

The only other president to do so was Grover Cleveland, who served as the 22nd president after the 1884 election and the 24th president following the 1892 election.

Cleveland, then governor of New York, was chosen as the Democratic nominee for president in 1884. He was seen as "the epitome of responsibility and stability," according to Daniel Klinghard, political science professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

A narrow victory in the popular vote gave him enough votes in the Electoral College to be named president. Four years later, even though he once again had a slight lead in the popular vote, he lost the Electoral College count to Republican Benjamin Harrison.

Cleveland remained well-thought of by the public, though. He won both the popular and Electoral vote in 1892.

During his first term, among the issues he took on: pushing for a reduction of tariffs that had been put in place during the Civil War. He advocated strongly for it, linking that position to the Democratic Party and getting public support, Klinghard said.

“That model of a president being a vocal, clear spokesperson for a policy that animated the party” was emulated by future presidents like Woodrow Wilson, he said. And it helped keep Cleveland in the public eye during the years following his first term.

“This is a point at which the modern notion of the of the national party really came together. Cleveland had a group of skilled political operatives, very wealthy folks, who saw themselves benefiting from free trade,” Klinghard said. “And they spent a lot of time sort of keeping Cleveland’s name in front of the electorate, sort of very much as Trump’s allies have done, sort of dismissing anybody else as a challenge — as a rival.”

(with agency inputs)