Book Review: Romney: A Reckoning

In the life of Mitt Romney, two-time Republican candidate for president (one time as the actual nominee), there exists two dueling elephants in the room: that of his father, George Romney’s, legacy, and the political forces within his own party, which gave rise to Donald Trump. Each, in their own way, but also informing the other, are the mirrors upon which Romney reckons with himself, his conscience, his duty to family and country, and his overall legacy as a “Romney.”

These twin factors are explored in great and fascinating depth in McKay Coppins’ new book out this year, Romney: A Reckoning. Coppins is a journalist with The Atlantic, and that shines through with the depth of the reporting and research — he had uniquely unfettered access to Romney, his family, advisors, friends, colleagues, and so on, as well as to email correspondents, letters, and most importantly, Romney’s contemporaneous diary during every beat of his political life — but also in how well-written the book is with a clear-eyed vision of the story being told, where even someone who isn’t a political junkie like me would not find it laborious to read.

In other words, Coppins’ singular achievement with Romney: A Reckoning, in my humble estimation, is that whatever one thinks or has thought of Mitt Romney, he is an interesting, unparalleled character within the body politic of the United States in the 21st century worthy of a biography, and of a “reckoning” from us, too. Romney somehow straddles the line between embodying what one might derisively think of as a “politician” and also the George Romney ethos, the Jimmy Stewart-esque “better part of our angels” more positive embodiment of a “politician.” He was never perfect, and indeed, the throughline of Romney reckoning with his life is how much he allowed ambition to guide him over his moral compass and in so doing, enabled the rise of Donald Trump and the uglier elements within his own political party. And yet. Something must be said about how Romney, eventually and in his own way, rose to the challenge and moment of Donald Trump’s ascendancy and dominance over his party. Romney argues that the best most can hope for is to be a footnote in history, but a footnote in the greatest, most powerful nation to ever exist is still quite something. Well, when the history books are written, the previous Republican nominee for president voting twice to impeach the subsequent Republican nominee for president earns Romney more than a mere footnote in American political history.

Romney’s rise into political life — going from a rich kid who didn’t realize he was rich and then serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in France through hardship and tragedy (quite the formidable experience for him) to then becoming a multi-millionaire many times over as a managing consultant with Baine Capital, which I found interesting that Romney is actually good at being a businessman in stark contrast to Trump who is good at branding — is dotted throughout by Coppins with a colorful, goofy, don’t-take-him-too-seriously character: Donald Trump, the New York real estate celebrity. Romney, who first met Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 1995, initially thinks he’s funny because of how off-the-wall charismatic he is, which is likely how most of America saw him. Then, as Trump began his own foray into politics with the racist birther conspiracy in 2012 (that Obama wasn’t born in the United States and thus, an illegitimate president), Romney became more reluctant to associate with him, and yet, did seek his endorsement because Trump was a big enough name at that point that shunning him would have been “bad politics.” Still, even with his rabble-rousing over Obama’s birth certificate, Romney nor the country, could have expected Trump to steamroll the other would-be Republican nominees for president in the 2016 primary. Romney, like everyone, thought Trump’s run for president in 2016 was a publicity stunt, and it would be short-lived. Oh, if only.

Even before Trump’s birtherism push, the seeds for his rise, and the enabling forces that led to them, was the rise of the Tea Party movement in 2009 in opposition to Obama’s presidency. Romney thought he understood this movement: they wanted to cut government spending and taxes. That’s what he wanted to do and thought his business acumen was exactly what the country needed by the time he ran in 2012. What he didn’t understand was the Tea Party movement, which ushered in a number of new Republicans, including Romney’s Senate counterpart later in Utah, Mike Lee, wasn’t buoyed by fiscal concerns but racial animus, populism, and a desire to burn it all down with the craziest person at the helm — an impulse entirely antithetical to conservatism, which seeks to “conserve” institutions.

And in fact, as Coppins does, you can trace the seeds for what would give rise to Trump in 2016 further back than 2012’s birtherism or 2009’s Tea Party movement, to McCain’s choice as the 2008 Republican nominee for president to select Sarah Palin has his running mate. Even by that point, McCain and then Romney in ’12, both of whom would obviously go on to publicly and vociferously oppose Trump, seemed to not understand fully the party they were in and where it was headed. Fox News, and before them, Rush Limbaugh, are also good starting points, and Romney has no shortage of animus for Fox News’ culpability for the struggles he had in 2012 to win over the Republican base, and their later about-face with Trump, particularly as it concerns Sean Hannity, someone Romney was previously cordial with.

What I think has been most revealing about Romney, aside from him re-discovering his moral compass in the spirit of his father, who was never afraid to go against the grain, including in support of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, is that during his Senate tenure, we’ve come to find out that Romney is a goofy person, and what people saw as a put-on during the 2012 presidential race against Obama — a rich man pretending to be down-to-earth — is that Romney is legitimately a rich man who is down-to-earth and goofy. Yes, he’s worthy of a side-eye glance because anyone who has the ambition to be president of the United States, and thinks they are the solution to what ails the country, deserves such skepticism of character, but the guy is what conservatives portended to want out of a leader: a family man who dotes on his wife of nearly 55 years and his children and grandchildren, a deeply religious man (albeit, to evangelicals, he’s of that “cult” faith, Mormonism, but given how evangelicals lined up in cult-like fashion behind Trump, I take what they think with less than a grain of salt), is a successful businessman and problem-solver (the 2002 Winter Olympics), and he does have a populist streak in terms of possessing some of that goofy-everyman character while also looking presidential. (I mean, the guy puts salmon on a bun with ketchup, which I can’t even lambaste because I’ve done that! As Romney likes to self-deprecate, he’s the authentic person who seems inauthentic.) And in fact, the entire way Coppins structures the book through the early missionary time in France to the family reunion at the end, I think mirrors how Romney views his life and his priorities in that everything is ultimately about, and returns to, family.

Interestingly, I didn’t know Romney toyed with running for a third time in 2016, despite the conventional wisdom that the loser of a presidential election becomes a “loser for life,” which obviously holds no water with the GOP today, given Trump is seeking a third nomination in 2024. I also didn’t know that Romney toyed briefly with running in 2024 on a sort of “no stupid people” ticket with Democrat Joe Manchin. But anyhow, my governor at the time in 2016, John Kasich, doesn’t come across well through Romney’s telling. Romney was one of the few Republicans in 2016 trying to do what he could to stop Trump from winning the nomination, but Kasich (and Ted Cruz) wouldn’t play ball. Again, the ego it takes to run for president often does a disservice to real service, i.e., principles over individual ambition, and later, principles over party.

What I most eagerly anticipated getting to in Coppins’ book (aside from the events of January 6th, which is a tease at the top of the book, with Mitch McConnell ignoring Romney’s warnings) is that photo: Trump, as president, dining with Romney, who is seeking the Secretary of State position, and Trump’s face has that shit-eating grin of knowing he’s cowed Romney and Romney has the look of being cowed. Interestingly, that was the second meeting between the two. Nonetheless, through Romney’s telling and some of Coppins’ own inference, Romney sought the job for the same reason others who criticized Trump would join his administration. They believed, perhaps rationalized, themselves as the needed “adults in the room” to guard against Trump’s worst impulses. But given what they knew about Trump, they should have known there was no way to be the “adult in the room.” Trump was going to Trump regardless of who was around him.

Somehow, the most loathsome character in the book is not Trump, however. Trump is loathsome, of course, but he’s not exactly hiding how loathsome he is, whereas many of Romney’s colleagues once he’s in the Senate confined in him their envy that he can criticize Trump while they publicly support and only privately criticize him. It should be noted, too, that one of the reasons they feel they can’t publicly criticize Trump is they fear for their and their family’s safety. How can a democracy function properly if its elected leaders are afraid of their party’s standard-bearer and the people? Nonetheless, no, the most loathsome character, and the one who most embodies the aforementioned public vs. private dichotomy, is Mitch McConnell, because he could have likely prevented January 6 from happening in the first place if he put any momentum behind the first impeachment of Trump over the Zelenskyy phone call. He knew Trump was guilty. He didn’t care for brazen political reasons, and rationalizing that if the Democrats regained power, they would ruin America. As if keeping Trump in power wouldn’t “ruin America.”

Indeed, though, that dichotomy of what Republicans say privately versus publicly about Trump, and how Romney disabused himself from feeling the need to do so, goes back to Romney reckoning with himself, his moral courage and conscience, and what his legacy as a “Romney” would be. He obviously staked his side on what he believed was the morally right thing to do versus the politically safe and expedient thing to do. For that, again, whatever we may think of Romney and whether we see this as a low bar to hurdle aside, we should be grateful for someone choosing what’s right over what it’s easy.

When history is written, Romney will not be exculpated from his culpability in coddling Trump and the fringe elements of the Republican base in pursuit of power, but that is also not the full story or the end of Romney’s. As Coppins masterfully detailed, Romney had an unlikely renaissance because of those twin elephants in his life: his dad, and Trump, and they pushed him to unprecedented acts in American politics that make the story of Romney not as neat and tidy as his detractors on both sides would like to think. Even still, both sides likely see him as inauthentic, but I think it took two presidential election losses and a rather humiliating dinner with former president Trump, for Romney to discover his most authentic, fully-realized self, and he became the man who finally caught up to the legacy left behind by his dad in order to leave behind his own legacy for the next generation of Romneys.