Review
Title: Romney: A Reckoning
Author: McKay Coppins
Publisher: Scribner
Year Published: 2023
Pages: 403
Format: Hardback
Genre: Biography
ISBN: 9781982196202
Price: $20.79
Reviewed by Kevin Folkman for the Association for Mormon Letters
In Romney: A Reckoning, McKay Coppins has actually written two books in one. The first is a biography of Mitt Romney, successful businessman, former governor of Massachusetts, rescuer of the 2002 Utah Winter Olympics, two-time presidential candidate, and currently U.S. senator from Utah. The second is a recounting of the Republican party’s rejection of Reagan conservatism for an extreme agenda and an authoritarian turn away from ethical and constitutional norms. This hard turn towards the right began with Newt Gingrich and is culminating in the MAGA politics of Donald Trump. Romney, in Coppins’s view, is caught between the idealistic conservatism of his father, Michigan governor and presidential candidate George Romney, and the extreme hard turn the GOP has taken over the last three decades. This book is about the conflict between public service as an ideal, the harsh pragmatism of reelection cycles, and the 24-hour news cycle where no good deed goes without being misunderstood by someone, somewhere.
Coppins writes for The Atlantic magazine and like Romney, is a life-long member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As such, Coppins brings an insider’s view of how Romney’s deep Mormon heritage has influenced his business and political career and the interplay between his faith and the harsher aspects of politics. Given total access to Romney, including years of personal emails, journals, notes, and hundreds of hours of interviews, Coppins successfully captures the contradictions and complexities of Romney’s life in business and public service. Romney’s religious Ideals frequently clash with reality as he seeks to reconcile his view of public service as a higher calling against the harsh pragmatism of politics.
Romney idolized his father, George W. Romney, former head of American Motors, governor of Michigan, and unsuccessful presidential candidate. From an early age, the younger Romney came to believe that his father exemplified doing the right thing regardless of the cost. Romney told Coppins, “If thousands of people were cheering, and Dad was standing alone, I knew he was right, and they were wrong.” [p17]
Romney also recognized that his father was not by nature a politician. Coppins shows how Romney, determined to be more sensitive to political calculus than his father, took a more practical approach to his campaigns. When the elder Romney was running against Richard Nixon for the 1968 GOP nomination, he leaned into the problems of race and inequality, meeting with Black Panthers and touring inner cities, “…pleading with white America to wake up to the injustices in their country.” Meanwhile, Nixon toured the South, “…channeling white grievance and courting conservatives with a law-and-order message” [p18]. Mitt Romney, while sharing much of his father’s ideals, decided that he would have to pay more attention to polls and political advisers. After a disastrous senate campaign against incumbent Ted Kennedy, Romney was asked to take over the scandal-plagued 2002 Utah Winter Olympics committee. Problem-solving, Coppins writes, was right up businessman Mitt’s alley. Romney fought through fallout from International Olympic Committee corruption, the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks, and huge financial deficits to accomplish a complete turnaround that netted a $56 million surplus when all was said and done. Fresh from this triumph, Romney returned to Massachusetts to run for governor in 2004. Stung by a failed senatorial race against Ted Kennedy, Romney pivoted to negative attacks against his opponent and a campaign that supported gay rights, a pro-choice stance, and some gun control initiatives.
As Coppins writes, Romney had learned “…for better or worse what it took to win” [p66]. Following his successful run for governor, Romney focused on fiscal responsibility and cleaning up messes, much as he had done with the 2002 Olympics. Still, Coppins reports, Romney always wanted to do “something that matters for people.” Inspired by an old business acquaintance and his religious idealism, Romney decided to tackle the problematic issue of universal health insurance. Despite opposition from within his own administration and staff and the idea that such a program was “not a Republican thing,” Romney saw his role as “partisan of pragmatism.” Working with both parties, insurance companies, and medical institutions, Romney came up with a plan that held the promise of actually working. A key part of the proposal was to require all residents to have health insurance or pay a fine. It turns out that 40% of the uninsured could afford insurance but chose not to purchase it, while 25% were eligible for Medicaid but had not signed up for it. The balance would need subsidies. When the bill finally passed in the legislature, even Ted Kennedy showed up at the signing ceremony to applaud Romney’s efforts. By virtually any measure, Coppins writes, the law was a success. Romney’s business acumen also helped him curb wasteful spending and trim costs at all levels of state government.
Building on this success, Romney’s constant sense of purpose and a desire to make a difference for others drew him towards a higher office. He found himself with a national platform that invited a run for the presidency in 2008. Here, Romney’s pragmatism began to be a problem. Much of what he had accomplished in Massachusetts as a Republican governor didn’t play well in the GOP primaries. Determined to be more attentive to his advisers and polling numbers, Romney tried to downplay the more centrist aspects of his time as governor and move to where Republican voters were.
What Coppins recognizes in Romney’s career is that the hard-nosed practicality of Romney’s business background that helped Republican Romney to be an effective governor of a left-leaning state like Massachusetts was not always an asset in the hyperbolic atmosphere of presidential primaries that tend to attract more extreme voters. When Romney first ran for the Senate in 1994, he opposed gay marriage but supported domestic partnership rights for same-sex couples. That made him progressive in 1994, Coppins observed, but in 2007, that position came across as pandering to the right wing. “The country’s changed, Romney would argue. It’s the same position all along.” In fact, Coppins writes, Romney didn’t place much importance on unwavering political positions. “Foolish consistency was not a virtue. Changing your mind could be good” [p83]. Such shifting on issues came across as flip-flopping, a charge first leveled by the McCain campaign, a label that would haunt Romney throughout the 2007-8 primary season and again in 2012.
During one campaign event in Iowa, Romney was surprised to hear the roar of approval when he called for an end to the “death tax.” He told Coppins that he had a moment of clarity: none of these people would ever be subjected to an estate tax that limited the amount of wealth that could be passed down to heirs without being subject to taxes. It struck him as a surreal response.
Romney also struggled with the evangelical response to his Mormon identity. In a meeting with leading figures from the religious right, Romney found few willing supporters. Some had issues with his appointment of LGBTQ attorneys to Massachusetts courts. Others could not support someone who didn’t adhere to the Nicene Creed. The list of problems went on. Romney finally asked Jerry Falwell, “What do the people in your pews believe?” Falwell sheepishly admitted, “most people would agree with you” [p77]. Romney’s LDS faith continued to be a problem again in the 2012 campaign but to a somewhat lesser extent.
In Romney’s 2012 campaign, he was even more distressed over the Republican party’s slant to the far right. Surveying his early competitors in 2011, Romney wrote notes in his journal. Michelle Bachman was “a nut case.” Rick Santorum was “sanctimonious, severe and strange.” He noted his wife Ann’s assessment of Newt Gingrich as “a megalomaniac, seriously needing psychiatric attention” and dismissing Texas governor Rick Perry, saying, “…we have to have someone who can complete a sentence.”
Yet Donald Trump now seemed to be lurking everywhere in the background of GOP politics. Romney found Trump an absurd reality star figure obsessed with his own importance and was distressed to see a parade of presidential candidates seeking Trump’s endorsement. The more Romney got to know Trump, the less he liked what he saw. Coppins spends a great deal of his book chronicling how Romney tried to navigate the troubled waters in Trump’s wake. In all cases, Romney weighed his conscience, moral character, and his LDS upbringing over political expediency and tried very hard to be true to himself.
Romney, in Coppins’ telling, comes across as a practical-minded problem solver with little patience for pretense and posturing and a resume of successful experience in both business and government. In other words, probably the kind of individual you would want as President. Unfortunately, Romney found donors and voters each have their own special interests and want candidates who support those interests. Romney struggled, as many politicians do, with learning how to read his audiences and react accordingly. It ran against his religious upbringing to say different things to different people when he had his own highly-held principles. This cognitive dissonance always troubled Romney, and Coppins found Romney’s journals full of musings about the conflicts. This only increased when Romney was elected to the Senate from Utah and found so many of his Republican colleagues more concerned about posturing for reelection and fundraising than legislating. As Romney became more critical of Trump and voted to impeach him, many members of Congress came to him and told him they wanted to do the same but couldn’t follow his lead for fear of voters in their home districts and the safety of themselves and their families. After the January 6th insurrection, Romney began paying $5,000 a day for his own private security.
It would be easy to dismiss Romney as naïve. His accomplishments in business, leading the troubled Utah Winter Olympics to a profitable finish, and record in Massachusetts would argue otherwise. In Coppins’ retelling of Romney’s life, he comes across as determined to make a difference for the better through his actions and hoping, but not assuming, that others want the same. It’s not an uncommon trait among members of the LDS church. That is why in Romney: A Reckoning, Romney found himself at odds with the changes in the culture of the Republican party of which he had long believed. In many ways, Romney reminds this reviewer of LDS writer and educator Eugene England, who also found himself swimming upstream against currents he couldn’t control.
Despite one’s political leanings, there is much for everyone to appreciate in Coppins’ biography of Romney. In a religion and culture that upholds high ideals, Romney’s experiences in business and politics can teach us much about making hard choices to maintain personal integrity in an imperfect world.