Trump gets 2 terms, but not in a row. Has it happened before?
With this week’s presidential campaign victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, Donald Trump finds himself in rare company, joining Grover Cleveland as the second chief executive of the United States to be elected to nonconsecutive terms.
Trump – the nation's 45th president from 2017 to 2021 – is now set to serve a second term, this time as the 47th president.
The first was Grover Cleveland, who served as the 22nd president from 1885 to 1889, followed by a second stint in the White House as the 24th from 1893 to 1897.
And in addition to the century-plus between their eras, the two men had diverging views on tariffs.
Who was Grover Cleveland?
Born in New Jersey in 1837 and raised in upstate New York, Cleveland practiced law in Buffalo before beginning a rapid ascent through the political ranks. In 1881, Cleveland, campaigning as a reformer against corruption, was elected mayor of Buffalo. A year later, he was elected governor of New York and was nominated in 1884 as the Democratic Party's nominee for president.
Cleveland, again running on an anti-corruption platform, defeated James Blaine, a former U.S. senator and secretary of state, to become the first Democratic president since the Civil War. Cleveland overcame a scandal in which he admitted to having fathered a child out of wedlock with a woman named Maria Halpin in 1874.
Cleveland won his first presidential term with support from reform Republicans known as Mugwumps, and his term would see both the Haymarket labor riots in Chicago in 1886 and passage of the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887, the first federal effort to regulate the railroad industry.
In 1886, at age 49, Cleveland became the only president to wed while in office, marrying 21-year-old Frances Folsom. His initial presidency was marked by other firsts: He was the first president to have a child while in the White House and, according to historian Louis Picone, the first to have the White House Christmas tree strung with electric lights.
His administration also stirred controversy when it blocked multiple bills offering pensions to Civil War veterans and distribution funds for seed grain to drought-stricken farmers. He said of the latter that federal aid "weakens the sturdiness of our national character."
Ryan McMahon, an assistant professor of political science at San Antonio College in Texas, said among Cleveland's 1888 reelection campaign goals was a reduction of high tariffs imposed by Republicans and supported by the wealthy, despite pushback from his party.
"Grover Cleveland as a Democrat was a big reformer, and he wanted to cut the tariffs because middle-class people pay that cost as an increased tax," McMahon said.
Cleveland won the 1888 popular vote but ultimately lost the Electoral College to Republican challenger Benjamin Harrison, whose campaign was buttressed by wealthy elites who would become known as robber barons, McMahon said.
Four years later Cleveland, who remained a prominent figure within the Democratic Party, was once again nominated to run for president, defeating Harrison on a campaign promise to reduce high tariffs.
During his second term, this time as the nation's 24th president, Cleveland was embattled nearly from the start. His first year in office was marked by the economic crisis known as the Panic of 1893, and the following year, thousands of railroad workers began what became known as the Pullman Strikes, crippling large portions of the railroad industry and forcing Cleveland to deploy federal military troops to break up the work stoppages.
"The economy was a disaster when he came in," McMahon said. "He had run again on cutting down tariffs, but the U.S. Treasury was in desperate need of money, so couldn't accomplish what he had set out to do."
By 1896 Cleveland enjoyed little support even within his party and chose to retire rather than seek reelection.
While Trump will be the second president to serve non-consecutive terms, there are others who were unsuccessful in their attempts to return to the White House after spending time as former presidents.
Martin Van Buren, the nation's 8th president from 1837 to 1841, ran an unsuccessful campaign in 1848 as a member of the Free Soil Party. Millard Fillmore, president from 1850 to 1853, accepted the 1856 nomination of the American Party, also known as the Know Nothing Party, but was not elected. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt, who'd served until 1909, sought a third term as president, running unsuccessfully as a third-party candidate.
Can Trump run again in 2028?
Not according to the 22nd Amendment.
A 2009 Congressional Research Service paper produced by national government specialist Thomas H. Neale notes that the four-year term for presidents and vice presidents is set down by Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.
Until Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to a third term in 1940, U.S. presidents had honored a long tradition of a self-imposed two-term limit, Neale wrote in his paper, “Presidential Terms and Tenure: Perspectives and Proposals for Change.” Since 1789, he said, only seven of 31 presidents served consecutive terms until Roosevelt, who was elected to a fourth term in 1944, and began that term before he died in 1945.
Roosevelt’s longevity prompted passage of the 22nd Amendment in 1951, which provides that no president can be elected more than twice.
"You would have to have a Constitutional amendment to change that, and that is a long and painful and difficult process to do," McMahon said. "It's extremely unrealistic to think of that happening."
Presidential historian Edward Frantz, chair of the history department at the University of Indianapolis in Indiana, had a final observation.
Given the historical nature of Trump's win, Frantz said, "The biggest winner of last night besides Donald Trump is Grover Cleveland and everyone asking about him."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Grover Cleveland and Donald Trump both got 2 terms, but not in a row