Cleveland won the presidency in 1884 by appealing to his record as a reformer. He characterized the Republicans as corrupt machine politicians who were too closely aligned with big business to be trusted. In general, there was little difference between Cleveland's approach to governing in his first term and his second. Though he vetoed several Republican-backed bills in his first term, he generally favored an approach that could basically be described as laissez-faire.
In his first term, his opposition to high tariffs was both consistent with Democratic orthodoxy and strongly opposed by Republicans and the corporations that supported them. However, he consistently opposed inflationary monetary policy, a stance that set him at odds with the emerging Populist movement.
His second term was marked by the Panic of 1893 and the subsequent economic depression, the worst in American history before the 1930s. His unwillingness to intervene directly in the crisis (except by continuing to embrace the gold standard) was not really a departure from his behavior in his first term, but it did mean that his second-term policies and approach to governing were more generally aligned with conservative business interests.
Therefore, his response to the economic crisis that gripped the country during his second term, more than any ideological or policy change on his part, was the defining characteristic of his two separate presidencies.
https://millercenter.org/president/cleveland/domestic-affairs
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