52 pages • 1 hour read
Romney: A Reckoning
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Prologue-Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
The author opens with a startling description of Romney’s anxiety about death and his obsessive focus on his health. He works out regularly, eats as healthy a diet as he can, and hopes to live to age 120, though he knows this hope is unrealistic.
On January 2, 2021, he experiences an unnerving feeling. There is chatter about an upcoming rally in Washington DC, and Romney’s name has been listed in connection with those who might be targeted.
Romney texts Mitch McConnell to express his concern and asks if sufficient security measures have been put in place. McConnell never responds. Ann Romney, Mitt’s wife, asks him to stay in Utah until the election is certified and the protest is over. On January 6, he enters the Senate chamber and is not surprised that Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona object to the certification of Arizona’s election results. Outside of the cloistered Senate, Trump and his supporters are wreaking havoc. The protesters breach the barrier, and security officers try to corral the senators. Romney yells at Missouri Senator Josh Hawley. The scene is chaotic and violent.
The author notes that he and Romney started meeting a few months after that. They often meet at Romney’s townhouse, a practical home a mile from the Capitol. The townhouse resembles a bachelor pad since Romney’s wife and children don’t visit often.
McKay pitched the idea of this book to Romney, asking for more details about Romney’s trajectory within the rapidly evolving Republican Party. His conditions: “full access, complete candor, and to yield no editorial control” (7). Romney obliged and gave him thousands of documents and journal notes from the last few decades of his political career. They meet in secret since Romney doesn’t want to give the GOP more reasons to distrust him. He claims that a large portion of his party doesn’t believe in the Constitution.
The insurrection made him question the legitimacy of modern Republican ideas, and he wondered about his role in maintaining the establishment. He feared that his own actions had contributed to Trump’s rise and the evolution of the party.
On his wall, Romney has a map of four thousand years of civilizations. He has become more fascinated with it since January 6, and discusses how each section of the map was dominated by tyrants who exploited human nature. He describes authoritarianism as a gargoyle lurking over a cathedral.
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Body Upstream”
Romney greatly admires and is fascinated by his father, George Wilcken Romney, whose political career met its downfall because George was committed to his ideals. George was born in Mexico in a Mormon colony founded by exiled polygamists. George’s childhood was marked by adversity. He went on his mission in England, where he preached on a soapbox. He dropped out of college to join his girlfriend, Lenore, in DC, where her father served in the Coolidge administration. She considered a career as an actress but chose to marry George instead. Every morning, he left a rose on her nightstand.
George threw himself into his business career and climbed the corporate ladder at American Motors. He gained a reputation for being stubborn and idealistic, character traits that Coppins claims are traditional among Romney men.
Mitt Romney was born in 1947, the youngest of four siblings. Mitt spent a lot of time with his father at work, learning about car construction and the politics of the auto industry. George Romney had a “populist streak” and made sure to connect with his employees and make them feel heard (15). Thirteen-year-old Mitt helped his father campaign.
George Romney became governor in January 1963 and established the state’s first civil rights commission. He became known as a liberal Republican and viewed himself as a successor to Lincoln and Eisenhower. He was appalled by Barry Goldwater and his ilk, who deemed themselves “conservative” as an excuse to be blatantly racist. At the Republican National Convention, George advocated for civil rights and against extremism. George refused to change his policies to run for president. His rival, Richard Nixon, infiltrated the south with racist rhetoric while George was meeting with Black Panthers and advocating for racial equality. Nixon gained popularity.
The final nail in the coffin of George’s presidential aspirations arrived during an interview about the Vietnam War. George had previously supported the war, but now he declared that his earlier support had represented “brainwashing.” This comment was widely perceived as unpatriotic and garnered an intense backlash.
Mitt was serving his Mormon mission in France at this time, and he was largely cut off from the news cycle. When he returned, he thought the response was absurd; to him, it had been clear that his dad meant he had previously believed he was being told the truth but then realized he was in the wrong. For Mitt, George’s presidential campaign came to represent a cautionary tale about the need to choose one’s words carefully.
Chapter 2 Summary: “‘This Means Something’”
From childhood, Mitt Romney “carried himself with a kind of rich-kid carelessness,” “charming and exasperating” (21). His parents had high expectations for him. He was not athletic but loved pranks. He was arrested three times between 1965 and 1968 and had a penchant for bullying.
When he was in high school, he met Ann Davies. As their relationship became more serious, she became more interested in the Mormon faith. She encouraged him to delay their wedding in order to pursue his mission trip.
Romney served his mission in Le Havre, a port city in Normandy, France, where his living conditions were far less comfortable than he was used to. His parents sent him The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, a distant ancestor, which Romney found inspiring. As he and the other missionaries traveled around France, he began to enjoy missionary life and felt that the difficulties he encountered were helping to build his character. Back in Michigan, Ann was attending church with his parents; she decided to convert.
Towards the end of his mission, Romney set out for Bordeaux with several other mission leaders. A car swerved into their lane, killing one of his passengers. He spent several days hospitalized. He struggled with survivor’s guilt and was determined to take life more seriously.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Hurry”
Romney returned from France in 1968 and married Ann three months later. He transferred from Stanford to BYU. By the time he started his MBA/JD at Harvard, he already had two sons. He accepted a job with Boston Consulting Group, which fostered a very competitive environment. At his next job, at the management consulting firm Bain & Company, he established boundaries about not working on Wednesday nights or Sundays so that he could spend time with his five sons. Romney rose quickly at Bain, but he felt that his career was limited by his desire to be home with his kids rather than out with clients. He was put in charge of his firm’s new private equity arm, where he had a reputation for frugality.
He volunteered in the Boston-area Mormon community, which was witnessing a growing feminist movement. His merely symbolic gestures towards them left both the feminists and their opponents dissatisfied.
As he climbed the corporate ladder, he began to cut corners and make unethical moves that he found increasingly hard to rationalize. By 1993, Romney was considering a political run. He had donated to candidates in both parties, but wanted to take on Ted Kennedy, who was widely seen as unbeatable. He did not enjoy the process of preparing to run for senate. Knowing that many of his fellow Mormons would disagree with his pro-choice stance on abortion, he studied Church doctrine and decided that he would use the Church’s 12th Article of Faith, which calls for a respect for the law.
Kennedy’s campaign used Romney’s record at Bain against him, employing testimonials from workers who had been laid off because of Romney’s decisions. Kennedy’s attack ads hurt because they were accurate, and Kennedy was a charismatic, gregarious debater. Romney lost massively while Republicans were taking control of both Houses of Congress under the guidance of Newt Gingrich. George Romney died eight months later.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Emergencies and Catastrophes”
In 1995, Romney was invited to join Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Romney was mystified by Trump’s extravagant displays of wealth and assumed that he’d never see Trump again.
In 1998, Ann was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She experimented with multiple treatments and therapies, including horseback riding.
Romney began to feel professionally restless. Ann was approached by a family friend who was scouting for a new CEO of the Salt Lake City Olympics. The city’s Olympic organization was beset by corruption. Romney was fascinated by the chaotic problems that needed solving, which included a $400 million budget shortfall and investigations by the Justice Department. Prominent Utah businessman Jon Huntsman, Sr. challenged Romney’s appointment since he wanted his son, Jon Huntsman, Jr. in charge. Romney set about changing the culture of the Salt Lake City Olympics, instituting a new regime of frugality and courting sponsors. He traveled to Washington to secure $13 million in federal funding.
The events of 9/11 added tremendous pressure to the Olympic preparations, and Romney threw himself into work. The Olympics emerged as a major success. Critics accused him of exaggerating the crisis so that he could emerge as a hero. His supporters viewed this as proof that he should return to politics.
Prologue-Chapter 4 Analysis
This section of the text establishes Romney’s political coming-of-age. Coppins emphasizes the difficulty of Reconciling the Public and Private Selves as the young Romney sacrifices of his own principles to achieve political gain.
George Romney instilled in his son the principles that guided his own political career, and the larger-than-life mythology of George Romney establishes the high bar that Mitt tries to reach. Like his father, Mitt established a background in corporate finance before setting out for politics, and he encountered many similar moral quandaries. He admittedly compromised his principles to climb the corporate ladder, acknowledging that his sometimes ruthless tactics would make him a more effective politician but would also damage perceptions of him in an election. Mitt was very conscious that his father’s presidential campaign failed because of his dedication to his ideals, and Mitt in turn attempted to maintain his own ideals while being more conscious of how these would be perceived. Coppins notes the difference between running for office in the 1960s and 2012 but admits the media’s continued role in distilling platforms to soundbites that remove the possibility of a nuanced discussion.
Coppins depicts Romney’s increasing self-awareness about the way he is portrayed in the media, suggesting that this new self-awareness has led Romney to prioritize his legacy over the opportunity for reelection. Coppins hints that part of the freedom of aging stems from the chance to act in the country’s best interest rather than fueling a self-serving agenda. This is an aspect of Romney’s recognition of The Responsibility of Privilege—a theme to which the book returns again and again. With his immense personal wealth and significant political influence, Romney is freer to speak out than many of his colleagues. Late in his career, his age becomes another, unexpected form of privilege, as he comes to realize that the bulk of his political career is behind him and he can now follow his conscience rather than worrying about reelection.
This section uses Romney’s fear of death—established in the prologue—as a framing device, as this youthful fear becomes prominent once again as insurrectionists storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Framing Romney’s life by using the insurrection in the prologue suggests that this is the “reckoning” that the title refers to: the fear and shame evoked by the insurrection forced Romney to consider both his mortality and the way that he will be remembered.
Coppins inserts extradiegetic disclaimers about the interaction between author and subject as a way of considering both his own motivations for writing the book and Romney’s motivations for participating in it. In this way, Coppins’s book is an unusual entry in the genre of political biography; unlike most biographies, he has direct access to his subject and is able to incorporate direct interviews into his contemplations of his subject’s life. At times, the text resembles a co-written memoir since so much of it is devoted to Romney’s reflections on his own actions. As he recognizes the damage done by the Trump administration and the fragmentation of the Republican party, Romney tries to understand, justify, and reconcile his role in the shift towards extremism. The explicit attempt to take accountability dramatizes The Tension Between Individual Conscience and Party Loyalty and renders Romney a more sympathetic subject. The symbolic act of giving Coppins the materials that he was saving for a memoir allows the reader insight into the relationship between Romney and Coppins; clearly, the nearly unfettered access demonstrates that Romney considers Coppins a trustworthy curator of his life.
Romney invites Coppins to examine a print in his office of Rand-McNally’s 1931 Histomap—a complex timeline of the rise and fall of empires throughout world history. This map (which is referred to several times throughout the text) becomes a key symbol that reflects a central argument of the text. Coppins describes Romney’s fixation with this map that depicts thousands of years of civilizations, and he uses this to explain Romney’s preoccupation with the conflict between personal ideals and public platforms that politicians are forced to endure. The theme of Reconciling the Public and Private Selves is examined through Romney’s contemplation of the sacrifices he makes to gain power, and he considers the “‘testosterone-related phenomenon’” of tyranny (10). Coppins makes it explicitly clear that Romney agreed to the interviews that led to the publication of this text after the insurrection; such a spectacle led him to fear the next step in the evolution of Trump’s tyranny.
The image of the gargoyle over the cathedral encapsulates Romney’s fear of Trump. For Romney, the desecration of the Capitol by insurrectionists demonstrated a terrifying violation of the principles that he holds most dear. If the Senate Chamber can be violated, what’s next?
As Romney ponders the discrepancy between idealism and pragmatism, he is forced to admit his role in perpetuating the political machine that enabled the mutation of the GOP. Coppins makes it clear that Romney hopes this book will serve as a justification, apology, and request for forgiveness.
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