and I seem to have a veto record not even approached by anyone else in the White House.” Mindful of their similarly high veto tallies in Albany, Roosevelt concluded, “I am very happy in the association which this record brings out.”87
Of the top quartile of vetoes given between 1829 and 2000, governorpresidents account for 70 percent.88 And though governor-presidents make up less than 40 percent of all presidents, they account for a surprising 64 percent of all presidential vetoes. The following chart puts the Cleveland veto record in perspective. While a preeminent vetoer, Cleveland was part of a cadre of governor-presidents whose use of the veto was unparalleled in American history.
Even when controlling for Cleveland's and FDR's vetoes, governorpresidents still veto disproportionately, accounting for over half of all presidential vetoes. More to the point, however, is the fact that Cleveland's executive background was hardly incidental to his behavior as president. Cleveland's deep executive experience is emblematic of the influential role executive background has played in presidential behavior. As Cleveland biographer H. Paul Jeffers recounts:
[Buffalo's City Council] crowned Grover Cleveland with a halo of political courage and enshrined his street-cleaning veto as the beginning of the most astonishing and rapid ascent from political obscurity to the pinnacle of governmental power in the annals of the United States. American historians and Cleveland biographers agree that if the Buffalo Common council had overridden the veto of the street-cleaning contract, Grover Cleveland could not that very year [1882], have become governor of New York, and only two years after that, have been elected the twenty-second President of the United States.89
Purely quantitative analyses of presidential vetoes tell only part of the story of the modern presidency. At a minimum, the veto record of former governors in the White House begs a reconsideration of the role of executive background in presidential politics. Certainly, behind Cleveland's use of the veto was the belief that it was the executive's responsibility to provide honest and efficient government to the people. Theda Skocpol is also correct in pointing out that Cleveland's presidential veto record was strongly tied to his antagonism toward the costs of veterans' pensions.90 But Cleveland's veto record before the presidency clearly aligns with his later use of the veto as part of a broader executive philosophy, one increasingly shared by state executives at the time. This emergent theory of executive power was matched by shifting constitutional dynamics in the states as the executive veto grew in strength and popularity.91 Cleveland himself saw an inherently popular role in the executive function, and this sentiment guided his attacks on Tammany Hall and the New York Democratic political boss of the time, John Kelley. As H. Wayne Morgan has pointed out about Cleveland's governorship, “Every ringing veto enlarged his public aura of honesty and independence from bread-and-butter Democrats.”92 To be sure, the use of the veto among presidents since Eisenhower has less to do with executive philosophy than with divided government. But this was not true during the rise of the modern presidency, when the warrants to veto were far more restricted, and, when challenged, were disproportionately so by former governors well versed in the practice.
Figure 2. Pocket and regular vetoes by president
Following in the footsteps of Tilden, Cleveland sought a leadership role independent of party bosses, thereby enhancing his national stature. Cleveland's early progressive support for smaller government in the interests of efficiency did not necessarily translate into a smaller executive; indeed, only the executive was powerful enough to stand up to the “interests.” And there was no executive in the nation—short of the president—greater equipped than New York's governor to draw attention to the need for reform. Tilden's 1876 campaign demonstrated that Democrats could win, and that reform executives, especially Hudson progressives, could parlay their independence into national prominence. As Henry Graff has argued, “The governorship of New York was regarded as second in importance only to the presidency itself, because of the state's central location, its growing population, and its economic primacy.”93 Stephen Skowronek likewise has observed that in Cleveland's meteoric rise, “Success in a new kind of [reform] politics seemed to herald a new kind of government.” To go one step further, a new kind of executive was essential to this new politics.94
If the use of the veto marked Cleveland's first presidential term, his second was shaped by the use of force in domestic disputes. The economic depression of 1893 enhanced the hand of executives nationally and Cleveland's use of presidential prerogative was part of a “Search for Order.” “Inevitably this new value system, consciously in conflict with that of nineteenth-century America, led the new middle class to see ‘the need for a government of continuous involvement' and to emphasize executive administration,” wrote Robert H. Wiebe in his classic work on the period.95 There is perhaps no better example of such active executive behavior from this time than when, in 1894, Cleveland put down the march on Washington of unemployed laborers known as “Coxey's Army” and the Pullman Strike in Chicago. Where Hayes had acted with the support of local officials, Cleveland did so over their opposition.96
Such intervention was atypical; it involved executive interference in state disputes deemed of a national character, and was unsolicited by state authorities.97 Cleveland later used his emergency powers in an effort to grab hold of the economic situation responsible for the uprisings, lobbying to repeal the Silver Act of 1890. This was seen as “an unprecedented invasion of Congressional prerogative,” with powerful implications for the presidency.98 Cleveland was clearly breaking new ground in federal-state relations. Illinois's Democratic governor John P. Altgeld, for one, protested Cleveland's willingness to use force against the states, arguing that Cleveland was in violation of the law.99 Nevertheless, Cleveland remained unshaken in his belief that he was acting in the public's best interest. The highly mixed record of Cleveland's presidential terms, particularly his second, should not detract from Cleveland's clear role in establishing a more powerful presidency.
If the modern presidency is measured by administrative expansion, centralization, White House staffing, and the dissemination of daily mail, there may well be little to see in Cleveland's presidency that speaks to a fundamentally altered national executive.100 Yet if we look to executive prerogative, the assertion of executive authority in legislative matters, and the distinction of executive privilege, Cleveland offers as open a window as any into the beginnings of modern presidential leadership. Unfortunately, Cleveland's contributions to the presidency are buried in an obscurity defined by the oddity of his nonsuccessive terms, his physical size, and his purported support for “rum, Romanism, and rebellion.”101 Also, public fascination with Cleveland's personal scandal persists.102 Finally, FDR's mammoth historic presidency has cast a shadow over the once highly regarded Cleveland (and nearly every other president since). Cleveland and FDR are perhaps now more popularly linked anecdotally, as it was Cleveland who once wished away any presidential ambitions for the then five-year-old Roosevelt upon first meeting him.103
In truth, none of the early progressive state executives demonstrated in toto the features of modern executive leadership best exemplified by FDR. But taken together, they do reflect the composite elements that TR, Wilson, and FDR would employ in turn and that ultimately demarcated new ground in the presidency. Equally significant is this group's executive connection to later presidential practice. To paraphrase Justice Louis Brandeis, legislatures may well have been the “laboratories of democracy,” but it was late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century statehouses that became the laboratories of modern executive leadership.104 As we shall see, no governorships were more prolific in this regard than the executive administrations of Hiram Johnson of California and Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin.
Progressive Fury: La Follette's and Johnson's Executive Leadership
