The Conflicted Legacy of Mitt Romney

After factional infighting dominated the G.O.P.’s struggle to elect a House speaker, it feels weirdly quaint to revisit Mitt Romney’s career. He’s served as governor, U.S. senator and presidential nominee for a Republican Party now nearly unrecognizable from what it was when he started out. At the end of his time in public office, Romney has found a new clarity in his identity as the consummate institutionalist in an increasingly anti-constitutionalist party. But as a newly published biography of him shows, that wasn’t always the case.
McKay Coppins, a staff writer at The Atlantic, interviewed Romney dozens of times over the past several years and had access to his private journals, emails, and text messages. In this resulting biography “Romney: A Reckoning (www.simonandschuster.com/book...) ,” Coppins pushes Romney to wrestle with his own role - even complicity - in what his party has become.
In this conversation, guest host Carlos Lozada and Coppins examine Romney’s legacy at a time when it may seem increasingly out of place with the mainstream G.O.P. They dive deep into the key decisions and events in Romney’s life; discuss the looming influence Mitt Romney’s father, George, also a Republican presidential candidate, had over his life; how Romney rationalized appeasing figures on the campaign trail he found disdainful, including Tea Party populists and an early 2010s Donald Trump; how he failed to articulate just why he wanted to be president; the many grudges he has against members of his own party who acquiesced or embraced Trump; how Romney will be remembered by history; and much more.
This episode was hosted by Carlos Lozada, a columnist for The New York Times Opinion, and the author of “What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era.” Lozada is also a host on “Matter of Opinion,” a weekly podcast from New York Times Opinion.
Book Recommendations:
The Last Politician (www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...) by Franklin Foer
Number the Stars (www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...) by Lois Lowry
The Plot (us.macmillan.com/books/978125...) by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Hell of a Book (www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...) by Jason Mott
Less (www.hachettebookgroup.com/tit...) by Andrew Sean Greer
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [e-mail].
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-....
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

[@hannahconroy]

What a delightful, moving episode. Thank you both!

[@pauldockree9915]

You were "thinking"? Ezra Klein?😮 This episode was hosted by Carlos Lozada, a columnist for The New York Times Opinion, and the author of “What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era.” Lozada is also a host on “Matter of Opinion,” a weekly podcast from New York Times Opinion

[@KingOFuh]

This particular podcast was originally called "Coppins Fellates Mitt, Who Agrees to Interview"

[@obtain60]

It seems strange to want to hold Romney accountable for having Trump on stage as a central theme. That wasn't a turning point in the GOP. I'm knee deep in GOP politics and I had to be reminded of that moment. The turning point in both major US parties was 2012, when the candidates both directly, and unapologetically attacked the voters of the other side. Romney's statement about 47% of American's being non-contributors was the most damaging impact on the political discourse. Obama's insult that the GOP was filled with people who just wanted to cling to their God and guns was similarly a complete mask-off moment for me. It was the first election in my life where both candidates asked to be the President of the country while proudly not wanting to represent the entire country.

[@ER1CwC]

Well it's a bit of a chicken-or-egg problem. Ambitious politicians will only play wedge politics if playing wedge politics works. So the underlying issue was that America was already very polarized. As for what has happened to the GOP specifically, it's indicative of the collapse of the center-right in many Western democratic countries. Several center-right parties have either completely collapsed or been taken over by the far right.

[@gordonericwinston4420]

You may want to read a little more POL SCI, this was not the first time.

[@ALotOfCancer]

You cannot say Obama's comment was in any way an attack. You're wrong. This was after Republicans blocked economic deals that would have benefited their voters. Obama was pissed.

[@vinista256]

@@ER1CwC It seems like what upset the OP most was not how Romney and Obama were “playing” the issues but what they said when they were being more candid and unguarded. OP read a basic contempt for ordinary workers in Obama’s comments about bitter people clinging to God and guns and in Romney’s comments about the 47% of the population who don’t contribute and who wait for handouts. (I say this as someone who voted for Obama twice and who thinks Romney probably would have been a decent president-certainly better than Trump. I’m just interpreting the original comment.)

[@ER1CwC]

@@vinista256 Yes, and I understand why their comments were problematic. But I think that both Obama and Romney recognized that such an approach to politics is corrosive, and that they actually tried to resist it when they could. Their comments were gaffes. I recall that Bush II and his team spent much of the mid-2000s openly calling anyone who criticized them (including the Iraq war and tax cuts) unpatriotic, and that they purposefully put ballot initiatives against gay marriage in swing states to boost social conservative voter turnout. Those seem to me far worse than anything Obama or Romney did. That administration was historically disastrous, and people seem to have completely forgotten.

[@kingsfan2099]

Who.cares about the guy who set the table for trump and then retired when stuff got hard. Was cool collecting the checks before but when he had to work for it he decided to go home.