The existing situation is injurious to the health of our entire body politic. It stifles in those for whose benefit it is permitted all patriotic love of country, and substitutes in its place selfish greed and grasping avarice. Devotion to American citizenship for its own sake and for what it should accomplish as a motive to our nation's advancement and the happiness of all our people is displaced by the assumption that the Government, instead of being the embodiment of equality, is but an instrumentality through which especial and individual advantages are to be gained.
The arrogance of this assumption is unconcealed. It appears in the sordid disregard of all but personal interests, in the refusal to abate for the benefit of others one iota of selfish advantage, and in combinations to perpetuate such advantages through efforts to control legislation and improperly influence the suffrages of the people."
President Cleveland was the only Democratic President elected in the fifty-two years between 1860 and 1912. He was elected twice: in 1884 and 1892, and is generally considered in the category of "near great" Presidents by most historians. If he had been more proactive--as Theodore Roosevelt was--he might have made the list of great Presidents. He out polled his opponent, Benjamin Harrison, in the popular vote in the 1888 election, but lost the Electoral College, due to fraud in Indiana.
The United States was essentially a one party state from 1861-1913. After Abraham Lincoln, the Republicans faithfully served the corporate robber barons of the Gilded Age--just as the Soviet Communist Party served Stalin--for most of that time period.
Pork, earmarks, whatever you want to call items attached to bills "for local and private advantage" rather "than for public benefit," have long been a problem within our House and Senate, and President Cleveland wrote of this problem in his 1888 Message to Congress:
"Appropriation bills for the support of the Government are defaced by items and provisions to meet private ends, and it is freely asserted by responsible and experienced parties that a bill appropriating money for public internal improvement would fail to meet with favor unless it contained items more for local and private advantage than for public benefit.
These statements can be much emphasized by an ascertainment of the proportion of Federal legislation which either bears upon its face its private character or which upon examination develops such a motive power.
And yet the people wait and expect from their chosen representatives such patriotic action as will advance the welfare of the entire country; and this expectation can only be answered by the performance of public duty with unselfish purpose. Our mission among the nations of the earth and our success in accomplishing the work God has given the American people to do require of those intrusted with the making and execution of our laws perfect devotion, above all other things, to the public good."
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