Earlier this week, President Biden and former President Trump sewed up their respective nominations seemingly setting up a rematch of or sequel to the 2020 election. I say “seemingly” because I posit that it’s still possible, and I think likely, that the Democrat replace Biden at the Democratic National Convention, but I digress.

With the presumptive nominees now set, the notion of “the rematch” deserves some attention. The country already got one 2020 repeat earlier this year, when the San Francisco 49ers took on the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. That did not go as I had hoped with the outcome also repeating itself as the Chiefs hoisted the Lombardi Trophy. Between the football and politics, 2024 is seemingly on a path to being “déjà vu all over again,” as Yogi Berra would say.

But Trump’s 2024 return to the ballot to take on his 2020 challenger is more than just a rematch. Billing it simply as just one of now seven repeat matchups misses an important characteristic: Trump is a former president! In most of those previous instances, the “rematch” involved a non-president taking on the incumbent he lost against before. The closest thing the repeat candidates had to presidential experience was losing their previous shot at the presidency.

For example, the perennial presidential candidate of the early 20th Century, William Jennings Bryan, one of the “rematch” examples (having matched up against William McKinley twice, and lost), never had the privilege of running as a former president. To return to a football comparison, William Jennings Bryan is the 90s Buffalo Bills of presidential nominees. The Bills represented the AFC in four straight Super Bowls from XXV to XXVIII, and they proceeded to lose every single one to the NFC East. It’s not a perfect analogy, because the Democrats had the good sense to nominate someone other than Bryan in 1904, but it’s still an apt comparison. The Bills might have made it to “the big dance” several times, but they were never Super Bowl Champions. The same can be said of Bryan who was a three-time nominee who never ascended to the presidency.

Notably, the Trump-Biden rematch differs in that President Trump has been America’s chief executive before. For that reason, 2024 is better considered a presidential comeback! And for that, there is only one comparison–the 1896 presidential rematch between incumbent Benjamin Harrison and former president Grover Cleveland, the outcome of which made President Cleveland the only nonconsecutive two-time president (so far).

With that, to prepare yourself for the upcoming election with a historical view, I recommend adding a Cleveland biography to your reading list. My choice, and a book I began reading this week, is A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland by Troy Senik.

Alternatively, Allan Nevins’ 1933 Pulitzer Prize winning two-volume biography Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage, which I read in 2022 in anticipation of this probability, is also a great choice.

A closing fun fact: Grover Cleveland was featured on the $1,000 bill.

Although the $1,000 has been discontinued, the level of inflation since Biden took office might be making the case for out-of-circulation, high denomination bills, like the McKinley ($500 bill) and the Cleveland ($1,000), to make their own comeback.