The Conflicted Legacy of Mitt Romney

<p>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.</p><p>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 “<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Romney/McKay-Coppins/9781982196202" target="_blank">Romney: A Reckoning</a>,” Coppins pushes Romney to wrestle with his own role — even complicity — in what his party has become.</p><p>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.</p><p><i>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.</i></p><p>Book Recommendations:</p><p><a href="https://www.penguinrand