52 pages • 1 hour read
McKay CoppinsRomney: A Reckoning
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 13-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “Conviction”
In 2018, John McCain invited Romney to his ranch in Sedona. McCain was dying of cancer and asked Romney to serve on the board of the International Republican Institute. After McCain’s passing, Romney was perceived as a natural successor to what McCain wanted to accomplish.
Romney was embarrassed when his secret Twitter account (“Pierre Delecto”) was revealed. He’d been using it to reply to posts about him and said that he considered it a form of venting.
Romney felt as if he was being closely watched as he continued not to support Trump. Sean Hannity berated him in public and private. In November 2019, Romney received a phone call from Oprah, who suggested that Mitt run as an Independent with her as his running mate.
Romney studied the possibility of presidential impeachment. McConnell was arguing that protecting Trump meant protecting the Senate majority, which was his priority. Pence attended the caucus meetings and tried to persuade everyone to follow the White House’s defense strategy.
Articles of impeachment arrived at the Senate in January 2020. During the trial, Romney became more certain that Trump was guilty. Romney hosted the Alfalfa Club’s annual black-tie banquet, where he delighted in giving a keynote that roasted Trump. Romney met with Joe Manchin; Trump had carried 68% of the vote in West Virginia, and Manchin feared opposing Trump. Romney reminded him that they were both 72 years old and should be less concerned about reelection.
Romney decided that he would vote to convict Trump on abuse of power and acquit him on obstruction of Congress. Paul Ryan wanted him to acquit Trump on both counts. Romney gave a speech decrying Trump’s actions and felt relief that he had done the right thing.
Chapter 14 Summary: “2020”
Romney quickly felt the backlash of voting for Trump’s impeachment. Republicans threatened his physical safety, and Democrats praised him. Denouncing Trump had caused a large drop in popularity for him in Utah. He wondered whether his relationships within the party had been damaged permanently.
He began following reports from China about a new virus. Trump told his supporters not to worry about it. Romney was one of the first senators to send his staff home and start working remotely. Romney was infuriated by Trump’s response. He quickly worked to get his constituents home from Europe and Asia and created plans to protect Utahns from the virus. He struggled with the limited reach of his office. The murder of George Floyd further pushed Romney away from Trump. He marched in a Black Lives Matter protest.
Romney feared Trump’s reelection and openly supported Biden. The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg presented a nightmare for Democrats. Romney supported the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett and realized that his short-lived popularity with Democrats would come to an end.
Chapter 15 Summary: “The Cathedral and the Gargoyle”
On January 5, 2021, Romney flew from Utah to DC. He received a lot of harassment from Trump supporters in the airport. The plane was packed with protestors.
On January 6, Trump gave his incendiary speech. As the mob stormed the Capitol, the senators panicked and were unsure where to go. They were eventually taken to a safe room, where they watched the live-streamed desecration of the Senate in disbelief.
Biden called for the mob to desist. Romney was flabbergasted that the architects of mob violence continued to support it. He considered Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz incredibly intelligent but self-serving and without moral conscience. Romney gave a speech asking his peers to weigh personal acclaim against conscience.
Biden was sworn in. The House impeached Trump for the second time, but this time even more Republicans supported Trump. More of them confided to Romney that they were increasingly fearful for their physical safety and would publicly support Trump because they feared repercussions.
Romney received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. He attended the Utah Republican Convention, where he was met with considerable vitriol. Saddened and scared by this response, he feared that physical violence would escalate.
Chapter 16 Summary: “New Friends”
Romney decided to revisit the list of things he wanted to accomplish in the Senate. Romney was determined to work with as many Democratic senators as he could.
He joined a group of bipartisan senators, “the gang of ten,” five Republicans and five Democrats who took pride in not bowing to partisanship. They passed a $908 million COVID relief package, developed a bill to improve infrastructure, and started hanging out more. Romney was pleased to have a group of friends in Washington. He realized that he tended to have more in common with the Democrats in this group than with other Republicans. Romney struck up a friendship with Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, then a Democrat, who was becoming unpopular with the left. The gang of 10 worked hard to hammer out legal minutiae. The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed.
In 2021, Romney expected that he would have cultivated more of a friendship with Biden. In 2022, Biden asked Romney’s opinion about his next Supreme Court nominee. Romney worried that he would find Ketanji Jackson too extreme, but after meeting with her, he found her very reasonable. Romney was one of three Republican Senators to vote in her favor. An unexpected friendship blossomed between Biden and Romney as they bonded over aging and trying to achieve bipartisan goals.
Chapter 17 Summary: “‘What We Used to Be’”
In February 2022, Russian troops entered Ukraine. Romney’s 2012 comments foreshadowing Russian aggression circulated on social media. Romney noted with distaste that many Republicans seemed awed by Putin’s authoritarianism. Around the world, the losing party of any election began to claim, as Trump had, that their election had been rigged.
Romney gained credibility with the Biden administration as a high-ranking Republican who wasn’t constantly attacking Biden.
After a devastating mass shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas, Romney was disappointed that many of his colleagues’ responses seemed tailored more toward earning votes than preventing gun deaths. The 2022 Senate midterms raised still more concerns for Romney. Domestic abusers and anti-vax conspiracists went unchallenged. Romney was especially confused by Ohio senatorial candidate JD Vance, whose memoir Hillbilly Elegy had posed thought-provoking questions about the future of conservatism. Once a staunch Trump critic, Vance had reinvented himself as one of Trump’s most vocal supporters. Romney’s fellow Utah senator Mike Lee was running against Evan McMullin, a moderate independent. Lee, who eventually won by 10 points, called out Romney for not supporting him. The House of Representatives now appeared ungovernable, and chaos reigned. By spring 2023, Romney decided that he would not run again.
As preparations for the 2024 election loomed, Romney was frustrated to see that the same dynamics that enabled the 2016 election were unfolding. His son Josh urged him to run in 2024—not with the expectation that he would win, but as a kind of protest to show how fractured the GOP had become. As he brainstormed his dream campaign, his advisor Stuart Stevens cautioned against this, reasoning that a Romney run would only take votes away from the Democratic nominee. He pondered how to start a new party and break away from the extreme conservatives who supported Trump.
Epilogue Summary
Every summer, the Romney clan gathers at their $14 million compound in New Hampshire. Coppins notes that the close-knit Romney family is very different from the Trumps. Romney reflects that he has struggled with his evolution within the Republican Party and tended to rationalize decisions that served his self-interest. He hopes that he will leave a positive legacy.
Chapter 13-Epilogue Analysis
The final section of the text invites reflection through the use of structural juxtaposition. Through these comparisons and contrasts, it is clear that the political landscape in which Romney came of age is no longer recognizable.
Coppins uses juxtaposition to examine the repeated patterns that have damaged American democracy. The dying Arizona senator John McCain is juxtaposed with Romney as an emblem of Romney’s own concerns with his legacy. From his deathbed, McCain clarified to Romney exactly how he would like to see his wishes carried out. McCain used his funeral to proclaim his desire for a return to the old order. By asking Obama to speak and Biden to serve as a pallbearer, McCain demonstrated that he was willing to cross party lines to instill rationality. By ensuring that Trump was not invited, McCain offered a surprising but strong show of resistance. Both Romney and Coppins praise McCain’s decision. While McCain and Romney had butted heads in the past, they established a sort of allyship in their shared disdain for Trump.
The discussion of Ruth Bader Ginsburg parallels the discussion of Orrin Hatch. As Hatch reaches out to Romney to ask him to consider replacing him in the Senate (and then changes his mind), Romney frustratedly recognizes the same mix of ego, fear, and stubbornness that causes many of his peers to view retirement as a form of death. Similarly, Ginsburg’s refusal to retire led to what Democrats viewed as a major crisis on the Supreme Court. Romney considers how both figures allowed their own egos to outweigh the good of the country.
This pattern of stubbornly clinging to recognition at the risk of truly hurting your party resonates as Romney watches his colleagues join Trump’s way of thinking. While he is not surprised by Cruz and Kasich, he is genuinely hurt to see other allies falling like dominoes. He finds JD Vance’s switch puzzling and upsetting, but he is most hurt by Paul Ryan’s sudden support for Trump. Here, Romney embraces his familial destiny and shows his stubborn idealism; he digs in his heels and is determined to prove them wrong.
The comparison between Romney’s “old friends” and “new friends” creates an atmosphere of hope, suggesting that, late in his career, Romney has finally found a way to reconcile The Tension Between Individual Conscience and Party Loyalty. The bipartisan camaraderie of the gang of ten starkly contrast the descriptions of a lonely Romney in Washington without friends he can trust. Indeed, the detail about Romney “thrilled to finally be making friends” and being teased for oversharing in the group text supports the previous characterization of him as overeager and slightly dorky (285).
The epilogue presents a bucolic final image of the Romney family, a nostalgic ode to the American dream. Forty Romneys gather to eat and play, a happy family reunion. Once again, the image of happy Mitt driving a boat full of grandkids stands in stark contrast to the presented images of Trump surrounding himself with yes-men.
Coppins omits some key moments from the 2012 election—Clint Eastwood’s speech to an empty chair (meant to represent President Obama) at the Republican National Convention, Romney’s much-mocked description of himself as “severely conservative.” However, the element of Romney’s recollections that most clearly clashes with the account given in this book is his confidence that he would win the election. According to Philip Rucker of the Washington Post, Romney was very sure of the election results (“Romney’s Belief in Himself Never Wavered”); according to Coppins’s account, he was much less sure. These omissions provoke questions about editorial choices and invite the reader to consider whether their expurgation was the work of Coppins or Romney.
The final section of the text expands upon the key argument of the previous chapters: The GOP has transformed into something Romney’s father would have found unrecognizable. As Romney ages and recognizes that reelection is less important than taking a stand, he sets the stage for a new chapter of his political career that perhaps resumes what John McCain’s funeral presented: an act of resistance.
