...1888. Grover Cleveland was running for re-election against Republican Benjamin Harrison,...

...Cleveland suspected the Senate wouldn't give him the authority he demanded. And he didn't really want it. What he wanted was to be turned down. By turning him down the Senate Republicans would make themselves look pro-British. And that would make Cleveland appear anti-British. And that would appeal to the Irish.

It was a simple political trap but the Senate Republicans fell into it. Just as Cleveland had hoped, the Republicans, unwilling to let him start a trade war with Canada —a trade war that would appeal to American patriotism and redound to his credit—turned down his request for emergency powers. And just as he had hoped, this put him in good stead with the Irish. In the days following his message to the Senate he received hundreds of letters from Irish families congratulating him on his “devotion to old Erin .”

But then, just two weeks before the election, the Republicans released a letter that Sir Lionel Sackville-West, the British ambassador to the United States, wrote to Charles F. Murchison in September. Murchison, who described himself as a naturalized Englishman now living in California , had asked which candidate for president would be good for Great Britain. The ambassador indiscreetly suggested that he favored Cleveland's election. When the word spread that the British ambassador prefererred Cleveland, the Irish abandoned his campaign. In November Cleveland lost New York and the election (though he won more popular votes than Harrison).

The dirty trick? The Englishman who wrote Sir Lionel Sackville-West was not really an Englishman at all. His real name was George Osgoodby. And he was a California Republican. Cleveland had been undone by a Republican hoax.

Sound familiar?

From here