
Presidential comebacks are not all they're cracked up to be, as Grover Cleveland's story shows
Fox News
Several former presidents have tried to get their old job back, but only one, Grover Cleveland, succeeded — and he left the White House with regrets. Bestselling author Jared Cohen shares the details.
And the only one who succeeded, Grover Cleveland, left the White House with regrets. By the time Cleveland's second term started, he may have wished he’d stayed at home. Cleveland worried his country was heading in the wrong direction. When a friend later asked Cleveland, "What shall we do with our ex-presidents?" he responded that they should be taken out to a five-acre lot and shot. Jared Cohen is a New York Times bestselling author. His latest book is "Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House" (Feb. 2024, S&S).
The lesson of history is that a presidential comeback is easy to try for, almost impossible to achieve — and always hard to do well.













