Joe Biden is regarded as the forty-sixth president of the United States . Yet , only 45 people have fulfill that position . Blame Grover Cleveland for this irritating historical discrepancy .
Take a smell at any U.S.historytextbook and you ’ll see the New Jersey - born Democrat cited as our22ndand24thpresident . Cleveland is the only two - term president to servenon - consecutive terms . He come through the1884 electionagainst Republican candidate James G. Blaine , becoming the first Democrat to win the White House since the Civil War , butlosthis reelection bid to RepublicanBenjamin Harrisonin 1888 .
The 1892 election presented a replay between Cleveland and Harrison with the improver of a third - party candidate , James B. Weaver of the People ’s Party . Weaver had astrong showingon election day : He won all of the electoral suffrage in Kansas , Colorado , Nevada , and Idaho , and shaved financial support from his opponents in Oregon and North Dakota , two states that split their electoral votes . In the close , however , Cleveland outdo the competition with 277 electoral vote to Harrison ’s 145 and Weaver ’s 22 .
Therefore , most historians count Grover Cleveland as two freestanding presidents . They vindicate the eminence by arguing that thefour - year gapbetween terms meant that the first- and second - full term Clevelands were n’t the same president , despite being the exact same person .
That did not seem consistent to by and by PresidentHarry S. Truman . “ If you count the government of Grover Cleveland twice because another president held office between his first and second full term , " Truman once said , “ you might strain to free the appellative of me as thirty-third chairperson . But then why do n’t you add up all the second terms of other presidents and the third and fourth terms ofPresident Roosevelt , and where will I be ? I am the thirty-second president . ” ( For the record , historians count Truman as the33rd president . )
In 2009 , President Barack Obama reignited the argumentation during his first first address . After being swear in , heerroneously claimedthat “ 45 Americans have now taken the presidential curse . "
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A version of this report was bring out in 2013 ; it has been update for 2024 .
