The greatest endorsement editorial of all time

The Iowa caucuses on Monday marked the official kickoff of the 2024 presidential nomination campaigns, and I, for one, find the prospect depressing. So far, none of the candidates running for president stand out as especially honorable, inspiring, imaginative, or wise, and I have a hard time seeing myself voting for any of them to be the nation's chief executive."

Would that someone like Grover Cleveland — my favorite Democratic president of all time — were in the 2024 field of presidential hopefuls! Before winning the White House in 1884, Cleveland had served as mayor of Buffalo and then as governor of New York. In both positions, he had acquired a reputation for fierce hostility to corruption and an inability to be intimidated by political threats. By the time he was drafted to run for president on the Democratic ticket, Cleveland was so renowned for his rectitude in public office that he was nicknamed "Grover the Good."

Then as now, newspapers endorsed (and opposed) political candidates, and it was during the 1884 presidential campaign that what I regard as the finest newspaper endorsement in US political history was published. It appeared in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, a Democratic-leaning paper, which gave its readers four reasons to send Cleveland to the White House:

"1. He is an honest man. 2. He is an honest man. 3. He is an honest man. 4. He is an honest man."

All I want in this presidential season is a candidate of whom the same can be said.

Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe, from which this is reprinted with permission."