A Centrist in the Arena
Jeffery Tyler Syck, “A Centrist in the Arena,” The Vital Center 2, no. 1 (Winter 2023): 63–64.
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The pressing philosophic question that emerges from this book is whether Romney’s chameleon strategy to promote conservative centrism is the work of an honorable man doing his best in a fallen world or the product of spiritual corruption. Coppins seems to favor the idea of Romney as a flawed but genuinely virtuous man, a view that is bolstered by Romney’s one-man stand against the populists in his own party.
Mitt Romney at CPAC in Orlando, FL. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia commons)
As a general rule, biographies of still breathing contemporaries are a dull affair. They tiptoe around controversy, withhold crucial information, and lack the general mystique that death gives all statesmen. McKay Coppins’s recently released book, Romney: A Reckoning, is an exception to this rule. On the surface, the book is simply a fun read—mixing amusing morsels of political gossip (such as the fitness routines of sitting United States Senators) with hard boiled commentary on our contemporary political crisis. But at heart, this biography is an intimate, and sometimes blunt, portrait of an ambitious politician struggling to remain true to his centrist principles.
Throughout his long career, one accusation has ceaselessly plagued Mitt Romney—that he is a “flip-flopper.” Those who follow politics have no doubt heard these attacks, which typically paint Romney as a political weathervane who changes views based on what stance will best promote his career. In the book Romney offers his own defense of this critique: “Foolish consistency was not a virtue. Changing your mind could be good.” Coppins adds, “He [Romney] didn’t see most policy disputes in clearly black-and-white terms” (p. 83). In short, Romney has never much believed that there is much point in sticking to a stance simply because you used to hold that view. We are always being presented with new information, and only an extremist would not allow their politics to reflect this.
There is, however, another reason that Mitt Romney so often seems to alter his political views—one that is at once more honorable and far harder to explain. First, though, it is important to establish the guiding principles of Romney’s political life. Throughout all of his campaigns and shifting policy positions, at heart Romney is a centrist conservative. Coppins describes this attitude early on in the book, declaring that “Romney was not an ideologue. He prided himself on this fact. Though he was a Republican, he had no patience for Rush Limbaugh and never read National Review. If he adhered to any kind of conservatism at all, it was of the small c variety […] He saw himself as a partisan of pragmatism” (p. 68) In this respect, Romney has all the hallmarks of a conservative centrist—including a fundamental belief that politics should be gradual, moderate, and pragmatic. The problem Romney soon discovered upon entering political life is that centrist politics are not rewarded in the American political system. In fact, they are actively discouraged by political institutions and electorates that demand a certain level of ideological purity from their candidates.
“Romney seems to resemble the Roman statesman Cicero more than any duplicitous Crassus or Wolsey. Cicero was doggedly dedicated to the Republic and battled against the extremist forces of the left and right to try and preserve the country that he loved.”
At this point Romney was faced with a choice all aspirants to high office must one day make: Do I compromise on my own beliefs to attain political power or do I sit on the sidelines pushing for my views as a private citizen? As we all know, Romney chose a life in the arena. Thus, to an extent his critics are right that Romney is a political weathervane. He does not, however, alter his policy stances merely to gain power; rather, he seeks to gradually shift politics toward his own, out-of-favor centrism.
In the most shocking instance of Romeny’s willingness to compromise, he abandoned the firm view of his Mormon faith in order to defend a woman’s right to choose an abortion while he was campaigning to be governor of Massachusetts, only to become ardently pro-life the second he started campaigning for the Republican nomination for president. Such a change of stance can be easy enough to bear—after all Romney had no real chance of moving the needle on abortion policy as the governor of such a socially liberal state—but Coppins makes clear that at several intervals Romney made compromises that betrayed his core beliefs and damaged the cause of conservative centrism. The most obvious example is Romney’s accepting of Donald Trump into the Republican fold throughout his 2012 presidential campaign—courting the reality star’s endorsement and permitting him to campaign on behalf of the nominee (p. 166). To say that Romney is responsible for the rise of Donald Trump would be disingenuous, and yet in hindsight, it is clear that he played an important role in elevating the eccentric New York billionaire to the forefront of American politics.
The pressing philosophic question that emerges from this book is whether Romney’s chameleon strategy to promote conservative centrism is the work of an honorable man doing his best in a fallen world or the product of spiritual corruption. Coppins seems to favor the idea of Romney as a flawed but genuinely virtuous man, a view that is bolstered by Romney’s one-man stand against the populists in his own party. Though an equally plausible explanation of Romney’s behavior is that throughout his earlier career, the Senator has continually sacrificed principle upon the altar of power in a way that is disturbing to any honest man.
In the final analysis, though, Romney seems to resemble the Roman statesman Cicero more than any duplicitous Crassus or Wolsey. Cicero was doggedly dedicated to the Republic and battled against the extremist forces of the left and right to try and preserve the country that he loved. In the process, he was forced to do a great deal of political gymnastics—supporting the populists and the aristocrats in turn so that he could deal with the most pressing threat. In the end, Cicero failed in his mission and the republic collapsed. Similarly, Romney has failed to make conservative centrism an important part of American politics. Though he deserves all the praise in the world for trying.
