By

Burton Folsom, Jr.

What should a candidate do when he wins the popular vote and loses the electoral vote-as Al Gore may have done on November 7?

In 1888, Grover Cleveland, a Democrat from a different generation, provided us a good role model for candidates who prove to be more popular with voters than with the Electoral College. In his race for re-election, Cleveland edged Republican Benjamin Harrison by 100,000 votes out of over 11 million cast nationwide. Yet Cleveland lost the electoral votes by a 233-168 margin. More specifically, Cleveland narrowly lost New York, with its cornucopia of electoral votes, and then was edged in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana by slender margins.

Naturally such a close election was controversial-especially when revelations of fraudulent voting were immediately revealed. In Indiana, which Harrison carried by a mere 2,348 votes, Judge Walter Gresham concluded, "You may convict a hundred-yes, even a thousand-obscure voters for bribery…." Allan Nevins, who wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Cleveland, explains why. "Spectators at the Bloomington, (Indiana) polls," Nevins writes, "were scandalized by the open parade of bribed voters…. The ruling price was $15 a vote, paid in five-dollar gold-pieces."

Reporters swarmed around Cleveland to ask him the obvious questions about his victory in the popular vote and the evidence of fraud. Cleveland genially quipped that he lost "mainly because the other party had the most votes." Here, of course, Cleveland was referring to the electoral votes, the votes that counted according to the Constitution. He ended all discussion when he stated, "We were defeated, it is true…."

There was never a Constitutional crisis in America because the Constitution, not polls, popular votes, or post-election appeals, was Cleveland's "controlling legal authority." Cleveland never whined that he won the popular vote; he never asked for recounts in Indiana or New York; and he caused no delays in the transferring of power from his administration to the next one.

Cleveland never protested the election because he believed the national interest was best served by honoring the official and legally certified verdicts of the states. "Public office is a public trust," Cleveland said. And the public trust in this case meant packing up and going back to New York. Issuing legal challenges in Indiana and New York may have spurred some of Cleveland's supporters, but never Cleveland himself.

Alyn Brodsky, author of the newly released Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character marvels at Cleveland's integrity and his strong sense of public duty over personal gain. "Here indeed," Brodsky writes, "was that rarest of political animals: one who believed his ultimate allegiance was to the nation, not to the party."

With the rule of law firmly in place, Cleveland left office but the United States gained the stability that helped it rise to industrial prominence during Cleveland's years on politics.

By contrast Al Gore has put personal advancement over the rule of law. Florida's ballots have been counted and even recounted in as honest a manner as the system permits. Even though Bush's brother is governor of Florida there is not even a whiff of the vote buying that put Harrison into the presidency in 1888. Both the count and the recount of votes has revealed a small margin of victory for George W. Bush.

Gore, unlike his Democratic predecessor of 1888, has challenged the very integrity of the voting process. He has tainted both his country and the man who will at some point become our next president. "I would not want to win the presidency by a few votes cast in error or misinterpreted or not counted, and I don't think Governor Bush wants that either," Gore has piously pronounced. Yet he demands further recounts in precincts favorable to him while ignoring precincts hostile to him.

How much damage Gore's persistence will cause the country is not yet certain. If he had looked at history more carefully he might have sacrificed the tainted presidency he has created for a mandate four years down the road. In the case of Cleveland, he came back to defeat Harrison in 1892 and thus became the only president in U. S. history to win two non-consecutive terms. Order prevailed and the American rise to world power continued without a glitch.

Burton Folsom, Jr. is Historian in Residence at the Center for the American Idea in Houston, Texas. He is the author of five books, including The Myth of the Robber Barons, which is in its third edition.