"The Government Should Not Support the People"

"But the misery of his countrymen and women did nothing to shake Cleveland’s laissez-faire convictions. He refused to support any relief measure and instead urged Congress to reaffirm the gold standard, which he thought would lead inflation-wary businessmen to start hiring again. In 1894, when railroad workers stopped trains around the country in a sympathy boycott, Cleveland dispatched the U.S. Army to break the strike and persuaded a court to put the leaders of the protest in jail. His job, Cleveland might have said, was 'not to worry about those people.' After all, he would 'never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.'"

At The New Republic, Michael Kazin compares Mitt Romney to Grover Cleveland.

And in Newsweek, Andrew Sullivan compares Barack Obama to Ronald Reagan.