'Henceforth, I Must Have No Friends': Evaluating the Economic Policies of Gwver Cleveland

摘要

Presidents and their economic polices are often judged by history according to what they have proactively accomplished. We naturally tend to remember the things that presidents do: Roosevelt's New Deal, Eisenhower's interstate highways, and Reagan's military buildup. But sometimes success can be achieved by the things that presidents prevent or undo, and it is in this light that Cleveland's presidency might best be judged. He was guided less by what a president should accomplish than by the executive's responsibility to act as a check on the power of special interests working through the legislature. He believed that the Constitution clearly limited the authority of the president and the federal government, and his economic policies reflected these principles. H. L. Mencken was effusive when he wrote that it was unlikely "we shall see [Cleveland's] like again, at least in the present age. The Presidency is now closed to the kind of character that he had so abundantly" (qtd. in Higgs 2003). Cleveland was more imperfect than Mencken suggests here, but he did demonstrate a consistent willingness to stand more squarely on principle (and that principle can rightly be called classical liberal) than on devotion to party or politics, often to his own detriment. That may well be the greatest testament to the man's tenure in public office.