12 Presidents Who Are Not On Mount Rushmore
Part three of a three part series.

Presidents Cleveland.

The Only President to Serve Nonconsecutive Terms: Grover Cleveland (1885-1889, 1893- 1897)

The election of 1884 was one of the closest elections in U.S. history. The Republican candidate, James G. Blaine, might have won if one of his supporters had kept quiet. The Reverend Samuel Burchard called the Democratic Party the "party of rum, Romanism, and rebellion." "Romanism" was a derogatory term that alienated Catholic voters and they voted for Grover Cleveland- an independent-minded Democrat.

Cleveland ran for reelection in 1888, vying against war hero Benjamin Harrison, the Republican nominee. The election was close. Cleveland won the popular vote by a 100,000-vote margin but lost the electoral vote, 168 to 233. (Cleveland's home state of New York was the difference in the election- his support of lower tariffs cost him the state.) He vowed he'd be back.

In 1892, Cleveland soundly defeated Harrison, reclaiming the office of president for the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, his second term proved to be fairly unsuccessful- he alienated industrialists by supporting tariffs, workers by breaking a strike and imperialists by refusing to annex the Hawaiian Islands. When Cleveland died in 1908, his last words were "I have tried so hard to do right."

McKinley

The First Imperialist President: William McKinley (1897-1901)

William McKinley, America's 25th president, ended the isolationism that had been in place since the days of George Washington by starting a policy of U.S. imperialism, or the annexation and domination of weaker countries. He considered imperialism good, referring to it as "benevolent assimilation." His accomplishments in the area of imperialism included:

+ The Spanish-American War in 1898, which led to the annexation of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

+ The annexation of Hawaii in 1898, after the Queen of Hawaii was overthrown in 1893 by U.S. businesses and U.S. troops.

+ The introduction of an opendoor policy in China, a policy that opened up trade with China for

Tyler.

every country.

McKinley's foreign policy proved quite popular with the American public and he won reelection easily in 1900, defeating the Democrat William Jennings Bryan decisively for a second time. On September 6, 1901, an anarchist by the name of Leon E. Czolgosz shot McKinley twice. He died a week later and Vice President Teddy Roosevelt, rushing back from a camping trip, was sworn in as president of the United States.

The Vice President Who Set a Precedent in Becoming President: John Tyler (1841- 1845)

In March 1841, Vice President John Tyler was getting ready to move to Washington, D.C. when he heard that President William Henry Harrison had died. Because the Constitution was silent on the matter, it was unclear if, upon the death of a president, the vice president would become president or merely "vice president acting as president", as John Quincy Adams maintained at the time. Defying his opponents, who dubbed him "His Accidency", Tyler decided that he was president and moved into the White House, thereby establishing a precedent that was never successfully challenged.

President John Q. Adams

As president, Tyler was stubborn- he refused to bargain or cooperate. His attitude made it tough for him get anything done, and it almost got him impeached when he vetoed a bill that his own party had proposed and passed to reestablish a national bank. (On the plus side, Tyler's second wife, who he married in 1844, was 30 years younger than he. He fathered seven children with her, bringing his total to 15 children, the most children any U.S. president has ever had.)

Tyler was a Southerner to the core and after listening to Abraham Lincoln's inauguration speech in 1861, he decided that the Union was over. He backed the Confederacy and openly urged secession. Later that year, the people of Virginia elected him to the Confederate House of Representatives. He died of a stroke in 1862, shortly before he could assume office.

The First Son of a President to Become President Himself: John Quincy Adams (1825- 1829)

John Quincy Adams was the son of the second president of the United States, John Adams. In 1824, after great success as an American foreign diplomat and secretary of state, John Q. ran for president against three other members of the Democratic- Republican Party. None of the candidates received a majority in the Electoral College, so the House of Representatives had to pick the new president. They selected John Quincy Adams, even though Andrew Jackson won the popular vote. This greatly angered Jackson and his supporters and as a result of their ire they formed the Democratic Party, still around today.

Adams ran again for president in 1828. That election turned out to be a very ugly one, pitting incumbent Adams against an angry Andrew Jackson who believed that he had won the presidential election in 1824. Jackson's supporters accused Adams of having premarital sex with his foreign born wife, while Adams' supporters called Jackson's mother a whore. Amidst all the name-calling Adams lost badly and he was so upset over the loss that he didn't attend Jackson's inauguration but, like his father, sneaked out of the capital and returned home.

Two years after he retired as president, the people of Massachusetts elected Adams to the House of Representatives. He served in that body for 17 years, accomplishing more as a congressman than in his four years as president. He died of a stroke on the job, the only U.S. president to expire in the Capital building.

Contact Martin H. Levinson at mandklevin@aol.com.