52 pages • 1-hour read
Romney: A Reckoning
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Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Just the Beginning”
After the election, Romney retreated to La Jolla and struggled to find any privacy. The GOP splintered and different factions blamed Romney for different reasons; Trump blamed his immigration stance. Romney examined the data and evaluated what he could have done better. He and Ann were comforted by the notion that their campaign brought more attention to Mormonism.
In November, Romney met Obama for lunch at the White House. He enjoyed the discussion of problem-solving but felt sad and tired when he realized that he no longer held any leadership positions that would give him an opportunity to address global problems. He met with a Latter-Day Saint apostle who blessed him and said that his career in politics was not over. During the 2014 midterms, he gathered with advisers to debate who should run for president in 2016. The more he met the candidates, the less impressed he was by them.
Romney was mystified by Trump’s campaign and frenzied followers. The GOP was in shambles, and advisors postulated that a Romney-Cruz ticket could help unite the Trump opponents. In February, David Duke endorsed Trump. Romney made a speech at the University of Utah in which he outlined Trump’s flaws and showed why he would make a dangerous candidate. This marked a historic moment, and Romney received praise from his fellow Republicans who, months later, would ostracize him for his views.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Vox”
Trump threw a tantrum in response to Romney’s criticism. Romney struggled to reconcile “his own coddling of Trump” and feared that he had inadvertently legitimized him (173). Romney tried to act as an intermediary between Trump opponents Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Ted Cruz. Romney hoped that a Cruz-Rubio ticket could crush Trump. They refused to join forces and continued to divide the Republican vote. Romney urged Kasich to drop out.
In April, Cruz and Kasich announced an alliance. Kasich immediately backpedaled, and Trump won the primary. Romney desperately reached out to candidates who had dropped out and previously denounced Trump but was startled to find that they were now supporting him. Romney found himself isolated and was mystified by the massive splintering of the party. He feared and loathed Trump’s “eerie staying power” (182).
After Trump won the presidency, Mike Pence called Romney to offer him the secretary of state position. Trump’s total lack of understanding of world affairs was terrifying, and Romney hoped that he could help corral Trump’s explosions. Romney flew to New Jersey to meet with Trump’s team. Pence clarified that in order for Romney to be considered for the position, he would have to make a public announcement of support for Trump. Romney wondered if he could be the “adult in the room” to prevent the Trump administration from wandering too far astray. He agreed to meet Trump for dinner at Trump Tower. A photo was taken of Trump and Romney in which Romney looks utterly miserable, and this of course circulated widely on Twitter.
Romney was forced to praise Trump in order to ingratiate himself enough to be given the secretary of state position. Trump later claimed that he was receiving too much pushback about Romney since Romney would not explicitly say that Trump would be a great president.
The visibility of Romney going to Trump in order to ask for a job did not make him seem particularly strong-willed, and he received a lot of criticism for attending the dinner. The Trump faction of the GOP used this to discredit him and paint him as a sycophant.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Turning and Turning”
Romney watched the early Trump presidency unfold. Orrin Hatch approached Romney and told him that he should run for his Senate seat in Utah. Romney was eager to come out of retirement and tackle a new challenge that could hopefully right some of Trump’s wrongs. He checked with the Huntsmans to make sure they were okay with it; Huntsman Jr. had been offered the post of ambassador to Russia.
He made a list of pros and cons. In August 2017, white nationalists marched through the University of Virginia, and Trump’s refusal to condemn them was deeply troubling. Republicans who were standing up to Trump were being pushed out. Romney decided to run in order to hopefully bring some stability to the Senate. Hatch started to reconsider his planned retirement, but Romney and Zwick persuaded him that Romney could take over and not threaten his legacy.
After announcing his candidacy, Romney received a call from Trump, who alleged that he was popular in Utah because he “gave… two million square miles of land” (a blatant miscalculation: the entire country is about 3.7 million square miles) (197). Some grumbled that Romney did not spend enough time in Utah to be considered a senator there. He used his campaign to promote himself while trying to ignore Trump.
Romney did fairly well campaigning in Utah. He attended a dinner in Cedar City that included an opening prayer by a vocal anti-government activist. Romney went so far as to hide in a closet to avoid being photographed with him.
In April, Romney attended the Utah Republican Convention, where he was bothered to see many MAGA hats. Romney won 49% of the delegates and Trump supporter David Kennedy won 51%. Romney eventually won the primary.
Trump created hysteria about migrants arriving at the southern border and began using the phrase “the enemy of the people” to describe the press. Romney wrote an essay extolling the role of freedom of press, which led to Republican anger that he was siding with the media instead of Trump. Romney won the Senate seat.
Chapter 12 Summary: “The Punch Bowl”
Much to Romney’s chagrin, Trump became more erratic after the 2018 midterms. Political consultant Beth Myers, one of Romney’s long-time political confidantes, urged him to be strong against Trump. Romney began to panic as more of the “adults in the room” that he’d trusted to corral Trump were forced to leave their positions because they could not continue to follow his deranged orders. Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned, saying he could no longer implement Trump’s policies. The federal shutdown and border wall crisis caused considerable concern for Romney.
On Christmas Eve 2018, Romney sent a long email to Myers and political consultant and author Stuart Stevens about Trump’s deficiencies. His op-ed about Trump was published in the Washington Post the week that he took office. His staff had sanitized the language, but it was still very clear that he did not think Trump capable or worthy. Supporters started calling Romney the leader of the Trump resistance. Politico ran a story depicting Romney as having been ostracized by his Republican colleagues.
Upon entering the Senate, Romney made a long list of things he wanted to accomplish and immediately set about learning how to achieve them. Another senator explained that only one-fifth of the Senate tries to do this; Romney was determined to be known as a workhorse. Romney was frustrated by his Republican colleagues’ apathy or inability to act, especially in regard to climate change.
Senate life was lonely. Romney felt like an anthropologist studying his colleagues. He was frustrated that they all seemed much more concerned with winning reelection than with making actual improvements. He realized that many of his colleagues shared his disdain for Trump, but few were willing to admit it. Trump’s followers were becoming more zealous and causing more chaos for the fractured GOP. Pence tried to tell the Republican senators that they had a duty to present a united front. Romney despised Pence’s sycophantic tendencies. Mitch McConnell privately told Romney that he approved of Romney’s determination to do the right thing but could not praise Romney in front of Pence.
Harry Reid asked for a meeting and apologized for spreading lies about Romney’s taxes in 2012. In March 2019, Romney was asked to join Trump for lunch at the White House, where it immediately became clear that Trump was trying to persuade him to be a more vocal supporter. Romney voted against Trump’s emergency declaration; he was disappointed that many colleagues who had promised they would vote the same way ended up supporting Trump.
A few weeks later, Trump attended the Senate Republicans’ caucus lunch. As he rambled on, the senators nodded in agreement; after he left, they burst into laughter.
In September 2019, the Washington Post published a story about a whistleblower who was concerned about exchanges between Trump and a foreign leader. Trump was pressuring Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden in exchange for military aid. Romney publicly spoke out against Trump and was chastised by Mitch McConnell. Trump asked China to join Ukraine in investigating the Bidens, which Romney also publicly opposed. This pushed Trump over the edge, launching him on an anti-Romney campaign.
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
This section of the text humanizes and offers a more sympathetic view of Romney. So far in the text, Romney has been viewed relatively objectively; in this section, Coppins creates several comparisons between Romney and Trump to persuasively depict Romney as the more rational, likable, and deserving leader.
Using perspective and point of view, Coppins offers insight into Romney’s inner life. This genre-bending play between limited and omniscient points of view has the effect of making Romney seem like both an object of study and a literary character, respectively. Just as Romney “spent his mornings in the Senate gym studying his colleagues like he was an anthropologist, jotting down his observations in his journal” (217), Coppins also examines Romney anthropologically while treating him like an interview subject. In this way, Coppins carefully establishes his relationship to his subject matter, showing that their mutual respect will not prevent a critical analysis of character.
Coppins uses the structure of the text to create a sense of suspense around the political rise of Donald Trump. Coppins frequently ends chapters with ominous descriptions of Trump, relying on the dramatic irony that comes with hindsight: Since the book was published in 2023, the reader knows much more about the outcome of these events than Romney could have known as they happened. Descriptions of Romney’s campaign are abruptly juxtaposed with descriptions of Trump’s ire. While this establishes a contrast between the two men, even more notable are the contrasts between other Republicans when they know they are being overheard and when they believe they are alone. For instance, Coppins says the following of a group of senators who had just promised Trump, to his face, that they follow his lead: “As soon as the president left, the Republican caucus burst into laughter” (226).
Coppins uses juxtaposition to highlight the differences between Romney and the new GOP. Descriptions of Trump’s outbursts are often juxtaposed with descriptions of Romney doing something calm and wholesome, like picking pumpkins in Utah or reading the news on Christmas Eve while his grandkids slumber down the hall; Trump is depicted as surrounded by people who flatter him but find him foolish while Romney is depicted as surrounded by people who love him. These juxtapositions not only emphasize the difference between Romney and Trump, but also convey the sense of Trump unraveling—and taking the GOP with him. Indeed, even in parallel images intended to show their loneliness—Romney alone in his DC penthouse because he doesn’t trust anyone enough to consider them a friend, Trump alone in his New York penthouse because no one wants to be around him—their motivations appear starkly different. Romney is depicted in La Jolla, Utah, and New Hampshire seeking the comfort of isolation with his family, while Trump is depicted in the Florida hotel where people pay money to be around him.
Coppins employs diction that emphasizes the high stakes of contemporary American politics. Romney is frequently depicted as “telling himself” comforting lies when forced into proximity with the right-wing extremists whose beliefs he initially tries to downplay: “a marginal fringe, he told himself” (200). The repetition of the term “unsettling” throughout the text is often used in relation to these right-wing extremists; the “unsettling edge to the proceedings” echoes the “unsettling” image of Trump’s face magnified on a Jumbotron behind him (200; 180). Using religious diction, Coppins emphasizes the urgent nature of these reckonings; the categorization of “Trump’s birther crusade” (174), “yearlong crusade” (198), and “president’s crusade” (203) underscore the high stakes of American political theater.
The central arguments of the text are reflected through these repeated comparisons between Trump and Romney. After losing the 2012 election, Obama invited Romney to the White House to ask his opinions on economic initiatives and ask for advice about how he should proceed (159). Supporting the man who beat him—and doing so without seeking credit or recognition for his ideas—reflects a degree of humility that Trump would not be capable of performing (188). Romney’s later shock at Trump’s courting of white supremacists settles into deep resignation as he accepts that Trump lacks all respect for the office of president and is more interested in making it a theatrical performance dedicated to self-aggrandizement (171). Romney considers the 2012 election with something like nostalgia; the 2012 election followed the rules and he lost fairly, but the 2016 election and 2021 insurrection revealed an uglier America that was willing to abandon all the rules.
Coppins maintains that Romney is not an ideal politician; he is not the dream savior of America, and he has certainly demonstrated some errors of judgment. Romney’s candor in working with Coppins suggests that he shares this view of himself. However, in comparison to “a manifestly unqualified madman” (167), he is depicted as extremely fair and rational. Romney is presented as a valid choice of leadership not because of who he is, but because of who he is not.
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